Legal dispute with EU Commission: EU court confirms billions in fine for Google

In the dispute with the EU Commission, Google suffered a defeat: The EU court upheld a billions in fine against the company. Google preferred its own price comparison service over competing services.

The EU court has confirmed a competition fine of 2.42 billion euros imposed by the EU Commission on Google. This was announced by the judges in Luxembourg. The Commission was right to complain about anti-competitive behavior on the part of Google.

The court found that Google preferred its own shopping comparison service over competing services. An appeal can still be lodged with the European Court of Justice against the judgment.

Search engine results from 13 countries affected

The Commission imposed the fine against 2017. Specifically, she accuses Google of having given its price comparison service Google Shopping an unlawful advantage.

The group had “abused its dominant position as a search engine operator by placing its own price comparison service at the top of its search results and downgrading comparison services of the competition,” said the EU Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who is still responsible for competition today violate EU antitrust law.

This affects search engine results in 13 European countries, including Germany. Google, however, called the decision from Brussels “legally, factually and economically” wrong.

Three EU competition fines against Google

It is the first judgment in a series of legal disputes between the EU Commission responsible for competition in the European Union and the US group. Since 2017, the Brussels authority has imposed several penalties on Google, some of them historic. So far, the three EU competition fines add up to more than eight billion euros.

For example, due to the competitive situation with the most widely used smartphone system in the world – Android – the record fine of 4.34 billion euros was due in 2018. Eight months later, 1.49 billion euros were added because, from the Commission’s point of view, Google had inadmissibly hindered other providers in search engine advertising in the “AdSense for Search” service. Google is also taking legal action against the other two penalties.