Google Loses Final Appeal Against $2.6 Billion EU Antitrust Fine

Google has lost its final appeal against a 2.4 billion euro (about $2.64 billion) European Union penalty for illegally prioritizing its shopping recommendations over rivals in search results.
The European Union’s Court of Justice on Sept. 10 upheld a lower court’s decision, rejecting the company’s appeal against the huge fine from the European Commission, the bloc’s top antitrust enforcer.
“By today’s judgment, the Court of Justice dismisses the appeal and thus upholds the judgment of the General Court,” the Court of Justice said in a statement.
The commission punished Google in 2017 for unfairly directing visitors to its own shopping service to the detriment of competitors.
It was one of three multibillion-euro fines that the commission has imposed on the tech giant in the previous decade, as Brussels stepped up its crackdown on the industry.
“We are disappointed with the decision of the Court, which relates to a very specific set of facts,” Google said in a statement in response to the decision.
Google argued that it made changes in 2017 to comply with the commission’s decision requiring it to treat competitors equally, including holding auctions for shopping search listings that it would bid for alongside other comparison shopping services.
“Our approach has worked successfully for more than seven years, generating billions of clicks for more than 800 comparison shopping services,” the company stated.
At the same time, the company appealed the decision. However, the EU General Court, the tribunal’s lower section, rejected its challenge in 2021, and the Court of Justice’s adviser later recommended rejecting the appeal.
European consumer group BEUC praised the Court of Justice’s decision, saying it shows how the bloc’s competition law “remains highly relevant” in digital markets.
“Google harmed millions of European consumers by ensuring that rival comparison shopping services were virtually invisible,” the group’s director general, Agustín Reyna, said.
“Google’s illegal practices prevented consumers from accessing potentially cheaper prices and useful product information from rival comparison shopping services on all sorts of products, from clothes to washing machines.”
Google is still appealing the other two EU antitrust penalties concerning its Android mobile operating system and AdSense advertising platform.
The EU General Court upheld the commission’s 4.13 billion euro (about $4.55 billion) fine in the Android case in 2022. Its initial appeal against the AdSense case, in which it was fined 1.49 billion euros (about $1.64 billion), has yet to be decided.
Those three cases foreshadowed expanded efforts by regulators worldwide to crack down on the tech industry.
The EU has since opened more investigations into Big Tech companies and drew up a new law—the Digital Markets Act—to prevent them from cornering online markets.
European Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said that the shopping case was one of the first attempts to regulate a digital company and had inspired similar efforts worldwide.
“The case was symbolic because it demonstrated even the most powerful tech companies could be held accountable. No one is above the law,” Vestager told reporters in Brussels.
Vestager, who’s set to step down in October as commissioner overseeing competition issues after 10 years in the role, said the commission will continue to open competition cases even as it enforces the Digital Markets Act, whose set of rules forces Google and other tech majors to offer consumers more choice.
Google is also facing pressure over its digital advertising business from the EU, which is carrying out an investigation into its practices
Outside the EU, competition regulators in the UK also accused Google of abusing its dominance in ad tech last week. In the United States, a federal antitrust trial began on Sept. 9 after the U.S. Department of Justice alleged that the company held a monopoly in the nation’s “ad tech” industry.