Brussels (AFP) – An EU court will rule on Wednesday on Google’s appeal of a 1.49-billion euro ($1.65 billion) fine from the European Union, a week after the US tech giant suffered a stinging legal defeat over a bigger penalty. Regulators worldwide are turning up the heat on Google parent Alphabet with trials and probes into one of the world’s most valuable companies.
Brussels scored a victory last week when the EU’s highest court in Luxembourg upheld a 2017 fine worth 2.42 billion euros against Google for abusing its dominant position by favouring its own comparison shopping service. Leading the way forward in targeting big tech abuses, the European Commission slapped Google with fines worth a total of 8.2 billion euros between 2017 and 2019 over antitrust violations. At stake on Wednesday is the third of those fines, worth 1.49 billion euros, which the EU’s powerful antitrust regulator imposed after finding that Google abused its dominance via its AdSense advertising service. The Luxembourg-based General Court will publish its decision on Google’s appeal against the fine after 0730 GMT.
Google asked the court to annul — in full or partially — the commission’s decision and/or annul or cut the fine. The long-running legal battles between Google and the EU do not end there. Google is also challenging a 4.3-billion-euro penalty Brussels levied on it for putting restrictions on Android smartphones to boost its internet search business. The 2018 fine remains the EU’s largest-ever antitrust penalty. The General Court in 2022 slightly reduced the fine to 4.1 billion euros, but mainly supported the commission’s argument that Google had imposed illegal restrictions. The legal saga continues in that case after Google appealed the latest decision before the higher European Court of Justice.
The EU has since armed itself with a more powerful legal weapon known as the Digital Markets Act (DMA) to rein in the world’s biggest tech companies, including Google. Rather than regulators discovering egregious antitrust violations after probes lasting many years, the DMA gives businesses a list of what they can and cannot do online. The aim is that tech titans change their ways before the need for deterrent fines. Google is already the subject of one investigation under the DMA alongside Facebook owner Meta and Apple.
Google is in the US regulators’ crosshairs as well. Last week, the tech titan faced its second major antitrust trial in less than a year with the US government accusing Google of a monopoly in ad technology — the complex system determining which online ads people see and their cost. It comes after a US judge in August found Google’s search business to be an illegal monopoly, a ruling which threatens a possible break-up for the tech behemoth. Ad tech is at the centre of multiple probes by regulators around the world. British regulators earlier this month said in provisional findings that Google abused its dominance in the market. The EU similarly concluded last year that Google is distorting competition in the market and recommended that the company be forced to divest its ad tech business.
Google has the right to respond in the British and EU cases before the regulators reach final conclusions. Alphabet in July said revenue from online ad searches climbed to $48.5 billion in the second quarter of this year.
© 2024 AFP
