European General Court upholds $2.8B fine for Google

By Agnes Szucs

BRUSSELS (AA) - The General Court of the EU dismissed on Wednesday the tech company Google’s appeal against a €2.4-billion ($2.7-billion) fine for breaching EU competition law.

Google and its parent company Alphabet introduced a lawsuit at the EU court after the European Commission imposed a penalty of €2.4 billion in 2017 for abusing Google’s dominant position on the market of online searches by favoring its own shopping comparison service over other similar products.

In its ruling, the EU court dismissed Google’s claim, confirmed the European Commission’s reasoning on the breach of EU antitrust regulation, and upheld the amount of penalty.

“By favoring its own comparison shopping service on its general results pages through more favorable display and positioning, while relegating the results from competing comparison services in those pages by means of ranking algorithms, Google departed from competition on the merits,” the legal body found.

They also noted that “Google favors its own comparison shopping service over competing services, rather than a better result over another result” by this practice.

The company can appeal against the decision at the supreme court of the bloc, the European Court of Justice.

Maintaining fair competition in the EU’s internal market is one of the few exclusive competencies of the EU. It allows the European Commission to decide on state aid rules and fine companies for breaching EU antitrust law.

In a separate case in 2018, the European Commission imposed €4.3 billion for abusing its dominant position related to the Android operating systems. The company appealed against the decision, the EU Court held hearings in September.