• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, September 26, 2017

Google will create a stand-alone business unit for its online shopping service as part of the fine imposed recently by the European Union's antitrust fine.

The new Google business unit will be required to bid against rivals for ads that serve up on its search engine, explains one report, citing three people who are familiar with the plans. 

EU regulators fined Google about $2.8 billion in June and ordered the company to stop promoting its own shopping search results in front of competitors. Bloomberg reports that if Google does not comply, it could endure a hefty fine of up to 5% of daily revenue.

Thursday's deadline to comply with the EU antitrust decision will give rivals like Shopzilla and Amazon an opportunity to buy space and serve links to retailers -- but only in Europe. This will not affect the U.S. search engine.

When Google's search algorithm detects a shopping query, ten advertising units will become available for auction in Shopping on the engine. Google will need to bid for those ad units, similar to other companies.

Google will become the parent for this new shopping unit, which primarily generates revenue from advertising.