Relief as Google Wins EU Antitrust Fight Over Ads
EU’s General Court has annulled a $1.7 billion antitrust fine imposed on Google for ad abuse. The court overturned the decision by regulators after Google challenged the ruling in court.
Google’s win in the EU antitrust fight comes when the tech giant is undergoing an antitrust trial in the US.
According to CNBC, the fine imposed on Google by the European Commission was a result of a 2019 case where Google was accused of abusing its market dominance through its product, AdSense for Search. Website owners use AdSense for Search to place ads on their web pages. The product allows users to optimize their websites for Google searches and ads to generate more revenue.
Restrictive Clauses
Google argued that it is an intermediary that lets advertisers place search ads on third-party websites.
The Commission had accused the search giant of abusing market dominance by imposing several clauses in its contracts with third-party websites. These clauses kept Google’s competitors from placing search ads on third-party websites.
The Commission fined Google $1.7 billion based on these claims, and the search giant filed an appeal against this ruling at the EU General Court.
Court Reasoning
On Wednesday, September 18, the EU General Court said that it upheld most of the findings that formed the basis of the ruling by the Commission. However, the court annulled the decision to impose the $1.7 billion fine on Google saying the Commission’s decision did not consider all relevant circumstances in assessing the contract clauses that it claimed were abusive.
“The Commission has also not demonstrated that the clauses in question had, first, possibly deterred innovation, next, helped Google to maintain and strengthen its dominant position on the national markets for online search advertising at issue and, last, that they had possibly harmed consumers,” Judges said.
Google expressed satisfaction with the ruling issued by EU’s second-highest court and said it will review it fully.
“This case concerns a very narrow subset of text-only search ads placed on a limited number of publishers’ websites. We made changes to our contracts in 2016 to remove the relevant provisions, even before the Commission’s decision. We are pleased that the court has recognized errors in the original decision and annulled the fine,” Google’s spokesperson said.
Possible Appeal
The EU Commission may decide to appeal the court’s ruling at the European Court of Justice. Several cases involving big tech companies in Europe and in the U.S. have concluded.
On September 10, Europe’s highest court upheld the $2.65 billion fine that the EU Commission imposed on Google for favoring its shopping comparison service. Review website Yelp has also sued Google over illegal monopoly in local search. Google’s ad technology is on the spot in an antitrust trial that commenced on September 9 in the US.
Last month, the tech giant faced a huge setback after a US court ruled that it is an illegal monopoly.
