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A week after losing a much bigger case, Alphabet subsidiary, Google has successfully contested a €1.49 billion antitrust penalty that was issued five years ago for impeding competitors in online search advertising.
In a 2019 ruling, the European Commission declared that Google had exploited its market dominance to stop websites from employing brokers that offered search advertisements other than its AdSense platform. The actions it claimed to be unlawful occurred between 2006 and 2016.
Although the fine was revoked, the General Court in Luxembourg largely concurred with the EU competition enforcer’s analysis of the case.
According to the judge: “The court upheld most of the commission’s assessments, but annulled the decision imposing a fine of almost €1.5 billion on Google, on the grounds in particular that it had failed to take into account all the relevant circumstances in its assessment of the duration of the contractual clauses that it had found to be unfair.”
Continuing, in 2010, Microsoft filed a case that led to the imposition of three fines totalling €8.25 billion on Google, including the AdSense charge.
According to Google, the targeted contracts were altered in 2016 before the Commission’s ruling, BrandSpur digital news platform reports.
The business lost its last legal battle last week against a punishment of €2.42 billion for allegedly giving smaller European competitors an unfair edge through its price comparison shopping service.
