Google To Split Off Its Shopping Service

According to reports, Alphabet’s Google unit will later this week split off its shopping service and make it a stand-alone business.

A person familiar with the situation has said that Google plans to split the unit off within its operations but it would not be integrated with the search business. It would require it to bid against other sites for ad placement at the top of search results.

It was just this past June that Google was fined by the European Union a record $2.7 billion after being investigated for seven years. According to EU regulators, Google had abused its search market dominance to give Google Shopping an advantage ahead of other retailers.

Google defended itself against the claim and said it “just doesn’t fit the reality of how most people shop online.”

“They reach merchant websites in many different ways: via general search engines, specialist search services, merchant platforms, social media sites, and online ads served by various companies,” remarked Kent Walker, Google’s general counsel.

Disclaimer: We have no position in Alphabet Inc Class A (NASDAQ: GOOGL) and have not been compensated for this article.