Penalty Archives - Gizmochina

Samsung to pay $9.8 million for misleading its smartphone customers

Sean — Fri, 29 Jul 2022 09:51:06 +0000

Samsung Electronics has been facing charges in Australia for apparently misleading its customers regarding one of its features on its Galaxy smartphones. And now, the company will be required to pay millions of US Dollars.

Galaxy S8+

For those unaware, the Australian Federal Court Justice Brendan Murphy had ordered the South Korean tech giant to 14 million Australian Dollars (roughly 9.8 million US Dollars) within 30 days. Furthermore, the brand will have to pay an additional 140,000 US Dollars for the cost faced by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which had began the investigation four years ago. The company faced the fine for misleading its smartphone customers regarding the water resistance claims for its Galaxy handsets.

These false claims were made regarding water resistance on seven Galaxy phones that were aired in 9 advertisements between the years 2016 and 2018. The models in these ads includes the Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 Edge, Galaxy A5 (2017), Galaxy A7 (2017), Galaxy S8, Galaxy S8 Plus, and Galaxy Note 8. As of right now, the smartphone maker is not disputing these charges and has also agreed to pay the penalty amount as well.

The reason for the fines are due to Samsung showing its smartphones being using in swimming pools and seawater. However, these models were only water resistant not water proofed and would not have been able to withstand these conditions in real world situations. Furthermore, one scene even showed them charging after being wet, which in reality would’ve damaged the charging ports of these smartphones.

Google loses antitrust appeal in the EU; needs to pay $2.8 billion fine

Jeet — Thu, 11 Nov 2021 07:32:40 +0000

The European Union’s General Court has ruled that the European Commission was right in fining Google for an antirust breach for which the technology giant was fined 2.42 billion euros, approximately $2.8 billion.

A few years ago, in 2017, EU’s competition watchdog European Commission found that Google had favored its own comparison shopping services and fined the company for breaching antitrust rules. The search engine giant then contested the claims to the second-highest court in the EU and has now lost the appeal.

The court has confirmed that the company will need to pay the fine of 2.42 billion euros. The Alphabet-owned company also has an option to appeal this verdict and take the case forward to the EU’s highest court.

In a press release, the court said: “The General Court finds that, by favoring its own comparison shopping service on its general results pages through more favorable display and positioning, while relegating the results from competing comparison services in those pages by means of ranking algorithms, Google departed from competition on the merits.”

The company said it made changes in 2017 to comply with the commission’s decision. In a statement, the company said: “Our approach has worked successfully for more than three years, generating billions of clicks for more than 700 comparison shopping services.”

After this anti-trust fine in 2017, the commission followed by two other major antitrust penalties against Google, totaling 8.25 billion euros ($9.5 billion), which the company is appealing. The fines are a drop in the bucket for Google’s parent company which earned $182 billion in revenue just last year.

Facebook fined $70 million for deliberate breach during Giphy acquisition probe

Jeet — Fri, 22 Oct 2021 04:45:35 +0000

Social media giant Facebook has been fined £50 million ($70 million USD) by the Competition and Markets Authority in the UK for purposely concealing information about its Giphy acquisition. The company’s dealings with Giphy were called out by the UK regulators, leading to CMA launching an antitrust probe.

The Competition and Markets Authority had issued an initial enforcement order to Facebook in June last year as it began its investigation into the acquisition deal. The order was aimed to ensure that companies continue to compete as they would in the absence of a merger and it prevents them from integrating further.

As a part of the order, Facebook is legally required to provide regular updates to show that it is complying with the order. But, CMA says that Facebook “significantly limited the scope of those updates” despite repeated warnings.

The regulator also noted that this is the first time a company has been found to have breached an IEO by “consciously refusing” to report all the required information. Further, it added that Facebook’s failure to comply was “deliberate” as the social media company was given multiple warnings.

Joel Bamford, senior director of mergers at the CMA, said: “We warned Facebook that its refusal to provide us with important information was a breach of the order but, even after losing its appeal in two separate courts, Facebook continued to disregard its legal obligations. This should serve as a warning to any company that thinks it is above the law.”

Separately, the CMA has fined Facebook £500,000 for changing its Chief Compliance Officer on two separate occasions without seeking consent first.

A couple of months ago, the CMA said it had provisionally found Facebook’s purchase of Giphy would harm competition between social media platforms and remove a potential challenger in the display advertising market. It also said that Facebook could be required to unwind the deal, which is reportedly worth $400 million, and sell off Giphy if its concerns are ultimately confirmed.