Several search providers boycotted Google’s auction, which asked companies to bid the amount they would be willing to pay Google each time a user selected their service.

Marc Al-Hames, managing director of Cliqz, a small, privacy-focused browser and search engine based in Munich, said the company abstained from the auction “because it does not give independent new market entrants like us a fair chance.” Christian Kroll, CEO of environment-focused search engine Ecosia, said in a statement that it chose not to participate because “we believe this auction is at odds with the spirit of the July 2018 EU Commission ruling.” 

Info.com couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

The EU is broadly concerned about Google’s dominance in search and has fined it three times, for a total of €8.3 billion, since 2017. EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager hinted in November that it may take more than fines to tame companies like Google, but so far hasn’t called for breaking up these platforms.

“From a competition point of view, you would have to do something where breaking up the company was the only solution to the illegal behavior,” Vestager said at a tech industry conference in November. “We don’t have that kind of case right now.”

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