Janice R. Andrews
The EU’s highest court confirmed a $2.7 billion antitrust fine against Google, ending its seven-year legal fight with the EU. The case from 2017 said that Google was favoring its own comparison shopping service in search results, which hurt other companies.
In its original decision, the European Commission said that Google abused its market power by pushing its own service over local competitors. The EU commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, said that Google’s strategy was flawed because the company didn’t just improve its product to win over customers, but instead used its power to push rivals to the bottom of the market.
Google took the case to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) after losing its first appeal in 2021. It said that the fine was an unfair punishment for its market dominance. Google said that the ruling got it wrong when it thought that quality changes were abusive behavior. However, the CJEU supported the lower court’s ruling, stressing that Google can have a dominant position, but it can’t use it to hurt competition.
Google said it was disappointed with the decision. A company representative said that the case had “a very specific set of facts” and that changes were made in 2017 to follow the European Commission’s decision. Google said that these changes have led billions of clicks to more than 800 shopping comparison sites over the last seven years.
Google is in more than one court case with the EU. The tech giant is being looked into again by the trade authorities for how it uses advertising technology. It may have to sell parts of its adtech business. Google has been paid a total of €8.25 billion ($9.12 billion) by the EU over the last ten years for breaking trade laws in different ways.
The company is still facing court fights, and how it deals with competition in the European market is still being closely watched.
