US: Google shares drop due to a 60 Minutes feature on antitrust threat

Google parent Alphabet shares fell more than 1% in early trading Friday amid reports that CBS’s flagship news program, 60 Minutes, is preparing a feature on global online advertizing giant.

Sixty Minutes said it would air a segment on Sunday May 20 titled “The Power of Google” that will focus on “its critics who say the company has stifled competition, and an antitrust enforcer who is taking action.”

Alphabet Google division was fined a record €2.42 billion (US$2.7 billion) by the European Commission last June for abusing its dominance as a search engine by giving itself an advantage in comparison shopping services. The company appealed the decision in September.

Margrethe Vestager, the EU competition commissioner, will be interviewed on the 60 Minutes segment, her office said Friday. Vestager fined Google a record US$2.7 billion last year over its shopping search service. The Mountain View, California-based company faces possible further fines in two separate EU probes into Android mobile phone software and Google’s online advertising contracts.

Full Content: Bloomberg

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