Google, a division of Alphabet, has successfully contested a $1.66 billion antitrust fine assessed five years ago by the European Commission.
The €1.49 billion fine, which Google has appealed, was imposed after the European Commission determined that the internet giant’s search ad brokering business breached competition rules between 2006 and 2016 to maintain a dominating position.
The Commission levied the penalty in 2019 after allegations that Google abused its market dominance by placing exclusive restrictions on contracts with third-party websites. The Commission argued that these terms prevented publishers from inserting competitor search ads on their results pages, compelling them to reserve the most profitable spots for Google ads.
On Wednesday, the EU’s General Court affirmed the majority of the EU’s findings but overturned the previous decision in its entirety, saying that the Commission had failed to consider all relevant facts when determining the duration of the contract clauses it found oppressive.
The sanction, which amounted to 1.29% of Google’s revenue in 2018, was overturned by the European Union’s General Court, Europe’s second-highest court, which ruled that the Commission had failed to consider all relevant factors.
In this most recent decision, the court determined that the Commission did not prove that Google’s contracts discouraged innovation, hurt consumers, or helped the corporation maintain and grow its dominating position in online search advertising.
When asked for a comment on the General Court’s decision, Google spokesman Jay Stoll wrote a statement welcoming the decision.
“This case is about a very narrow subset of text-only search ads placed on a limited number of publishers’ websites,” Google wrote. “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 recognised errors in the original decision and annulled the fine. We will review the full decision closely.”
We earlier reported that a federal judge has stated that he will issue a sentence in Google’s antitrust lawsuit by August 2025, after deciding earlier this month that Google had misused its monopolistic power in the search market.
