Google fought off a €1.5 billion fine for anti-competitive actions

Google managed to win an appeal in the Court of Justice of the European Union, which overturned the €1.5 billion fine imposed by the European Commission in 2019. The agency is likely to challenge this decision.

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The Luxembourg-based European Union court ruled it accepted “most of the commission’s findings” that the company abused its dominant market position to hamper rival online advertisers, but overturned a huge fine imposed on Google in the case. Opening a case against Google in 2019, European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said that the search giant’s anti-competitive restrictions on third-party resources were in effect for ten years from 2006 to 2016. She explained the €1.5 billion fine by saying it reflected the “serious and persistent nature” of the offence.

The court, however, ruled that the Commission did not “take into account all relevant circumstances when assessing the duration of treaty provisions that it considered unfair.” The department said it took the decision “for note and will carefully study it and its possible further steps” and will likely appeal it. Google said: “This case involves a small number of text search ads placed on a limited number of publisher sites. We amended our contracts in 2016, removing the relevant provisions even before the commission’s decision. We are glad that the court admitted errors in the original decision and canceled the fine. We will study the full solution in detail.”

In recent years, European officials have sued Google three times over fines totaling €8.25 billion – those dissatisfied with the activities of the American company said that it had harmed the online advertising market, and antitrust actions against it were too slow and ineffective. Earlier, the European Court upheld a fine of €2.42 billion imposed on Google – the company was accused of abusing its dominant position in the market, which helped it put its shopping services above its competitors. A case against Google is still pending in Brussels over the company’s dominance of the ad tech market – last year European officials threatened to demand a break-up of the company as the only viable solution to address competition concerns. The question of whether the imposition of new fines on Google is justified is now being decided.