Three years ago, EU antitrust regulators imposed a fine of 1.49 billion euros ($1.6 billion) on Google for “impeding competition between competitors in the field of online search advertising”. On Monday, Google urged Europe’s second-highest court to dismiss the fine.
IT Home has learned that Alphabet’s Google owns the world’s largest Internet search engine, but it has also been fined by the European Union a total of 8.25 billion euros in antitrust fines. The above case is just one of them.
The European Commission said in a 2019 decision that Google had abused its dominant position by banning sites from using resellers other than the AdSense platform, which offers search ads. The European Commission said its illegal acts mainly occurred between 2006 and 2016. Google then challenged the EU ruling in the Luxembourg-based ordinary court. The company will present its case during a three-day hearing that begins Monday.
Google said in a court filing that the EU competition enforcement agency’s assessment of Google’s dominance and the European Commission’s decision that search and non-search advertising do not constitute competition were wrong conclusions.
Apple has also disputed the European Commission’s view that the company’s exclusivity, paid placement and minimum Google Ads terms are an abuse of its dominant position.
It is worth mentioning that Google also faced such a lawsuit last year when it lost because the company used its own comparison shopping service to gain an unfair advantage in competition with smaller European competitors.