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Naver decided to take legal action against disciplinary action from the Fair Trade Commission.
Naver said in a statement on the 6th: “The FTC has made a decision that essentially infringes on Naver’s business activities without sufficient review and concern” and “We will fight injustice in court as long as we do not agree with this decision.”
▲ A view of the Naver Gyeonggi-do Bundang office building.
Previously, the FTC imposed a correction order and a total fine of 26.7 billion won (26.7 billion won for purchases, 200 million won for video) on Naver for abuse of its dominant position in the market. by adjusting search algorithms.
According to the Fair Trade Commission, Naver operates a search service in the shopping and video sectors, while artificially adjusting and changing the search algorithm, placing products and services in smart stores like Naver TV at the top of search results. and competitors at the bottom.
In this regard, the FTC said, “Naver misled consumers and distorted the competition between the open market and the video platform market by unreasonably changing the exposure ranking of search results by adjusting and changing the search algorithm in the search market in the shopping and video fields “. .
The FTC found that the fact that Naver assigned additional points directly to products and services uploaded to the smart store when determining the exposure ranking of search results, and failed to notify competitors of such important matters by reorganizing the algorithm, had a negative impact on the competitive order. did.
However, Naver said: “From 2010 to 2017, when the FTC investigation was conducted, the shopping search algorithm has been improved more than 50 times to give small business owners the opportunity to showcase products, But the FTC decided that Naver Shopping tried to exclude competitors by randomly selecting only five tasks. He refuted.
In the process of tuning the search algorithm, Naver introduced a logic of limiting the exposure of three or more consecutive products in the same shopping center in 2013. At that time, the Fair Trade Commission considered that the fact that the entire market being treated as the same shopping center was an act of discrimination against the operators of the open market.
However, Naver said, “the entire open market was treated as a single mall because the one that signed the contract with Naver Shopping is the open market business, and the individual open market businesses have no contractual relationship with Naver Shopping.”
Naver is considered a ‘malicious point’ despite the FTC judging that other open market operators were excluded by weighting only the sales index applied to their own open market products as ‘Shop N’ to increase the exposure ratio of the product. received.
Naver said, “For highly reliable search results, all malls that provide accurate information on sales performance were weighted.” In 2013, more than 13,000 external shopping centers, excluding Shop N, were subject to weighting. I went up, ”he said.
Naver said: “Considering that 30-35% of the products registered in Naver Shopping are important open market products, the open market is an important partner in the Naver Shopping ecosystem. There is no reason for Naver to exclude the open market”. It should not be excluded, ”he added.
Naver also leaned on the fact that the FTC recognized Naver as a commercial operator with a dominant position in the market that does not compete with the open market.
Naver said: “In the domestic online commerce market, domestic and foreign companies are in a close battle, but the FTC recognized Naver’s dominant position in the market by saying that Naver Shopping does not compete with the open market. I wonder if it is. “
Naver protested not to abuse its dominant market position in the video field. Naver reorganized the video search algorithm in 2017, but the FTC saw a problem with it.
In this regard, Naver said: “At that time, the video market was dominated by YouTube and the market share of all other operators decreased.” “At the time, the reorganization was not preferential treatment for our videos, but rather a concern and an effort to provide better search results to users. It was a product of, ”he said.
Naver said, “The video service that the FTC deemed we gave additional points to is not the full Naver video, but 20% of the videos selected through a separate screening between Naver TV,” Naver said. “By rearranging the search algorithm, it gave me a little addition.”
A Naver official added, “The reorganization of the shopping and video search algorithms identified by the FTC was done in accordance with efforts to display optimal search results to meet the diverse search needs of users,” adding: “It has nothing to do with the exclusion of other companies.” . [비즈니스포스트 이규연 기자]
