How a UK Couple’s Battle with Google Led to a £2.4 Billion Fine

After a grueling 15-year battle, UK couple Shivaun and Adam Raff have succeeded in holding Google accountable, costing the tech giant a record £2.4 billion fine. It all began in 2006 when the Raffs launched Foundem, a price comparison website. Shortly after, they noticed a sudden drop in visibility on Google search results for key terms like “price comparison” and “shopping.” The culprit was an automated penalty from Google’s spam filters, which tanked their site’s rankings and severely impacted Foundem’s ability to attract users and generate revenue.

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“We were monitoring our pages and how they were ranking, and then we saw them all plummet almost immediately,” Adam Raff explained. Initially, they assumed this was a technical issue that could be quickly resolved. “We just assumed we had to escalate to the right place, and it would be overturned,” Shivaun noted. However, after two years of failed appeals to Google and ongoing low visibility, it became clear that something bigger was at play.

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In 2010, their case took a major turn when they presented it to the European Commission, which launched an antitrust investigation. In 2017, the European Commission concluded that Google had abused its market dominance, actively promoting its own shopping service over competitors like Foundem. This resulted in the initial £2.4 billion fine, which Google quickly appealed, extending the battle by another seven years.

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The appeals process finally concluded in 2024, with the European Court of Justice upholding the fine, marking a significant victory for the Raffs and a symbolic win for small businesses fighting Big Tech. Google maintains that the changes it implemented in 2017 to comply with the Commission’s decision have since generated billions of clicks for over 800 comparison shopping services.

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Shivaun Raff reflected on the journey, saying, “We’ve both been brought up maybe under the delusion that we can make a difference, and we really don’t like bullies.” Despite the victory, the Raffs’ journey isn’t over—they plan to pursue a civil damages claim against Google in 2026. Foundem, however, was forced to close in 2016 due to the years of financial strain from the lawsuit. “If we had known it would take this long, we might have thought twice,” Adam Raff admitted.

This landmark case has set a precedent for holding tech giants accountable for monopolistic practices, sending a clear message that smaller entities can, in fact, challenge and impact the industry’s biggest players.