Google won its appeal of an enormous antitrust fine that the European Commission imposed five years ago. The European General Court declared Wednesday that it is vacating the €1.5 billion penalty. The court said grave errors were committed by the Commission during the assessment of the advertising contracts of the company.
The Commission claimed the advertising contracts signed by Google with the publishers restrained innovation, entrenched the corporation’s market position, and harmed consumers. However, the court established that the Commission had not presented enough proof of the claims.
Timeline of Events:
The commission in 2019 fined Google for imposing restrictive contracts on third party websites using its AdSense platform. These contracts barred the websites from running ads that are competing with Google’s search results, alongside Google search results.
Google filed an appeal against it as the commission had made “material errors of analysis.” This was its third major antitrust penalty by the EU in the last decade that the Alphabet-owned company suffered.
Google has since modified its deals to address the problems expressed by the Commission. A Google spokesperson indicated that they were pleased with the court decision and that the issue was pretty isolated cases of text-only search ads displayed on a smaller number of publishers’ Web sites.
Active Investigations
After winning this particular case, Google faces relentless antitrust probes in the EU as well as in the US. In the EU, the question is whether Google favors its ad technology services. It’s also investigating how Google complies with the Digital Markets Act. In the US, the Department of Justice and state Attorneys General are probing Google’s ad tech dominance.
