Bad luck for the Commission

EU court rules against Google for billion euro fine

Although the judges confirmed most of the EU Commission's findings, they annulled the fine.

(Bild: Alastair Grant)

In the dispute over a competition fine of 1.49 billion euros, Google has won a victory before the General Court of the EU. The EU Commission had not sufficiently proven that Google had abused its dominant position in search engine advertising in the "AdSense for Search" service, the judges ruled.

Although the judges confirmed most of the EU Commission's findings, they annulled the fine. The Brussels authority had not taken all relevant circumstances into account when determining whether Google's contractual clauses had been abusive. The ruling can still be appealed before the European Court of Justice.

"We are pleased that the court has recognized errors in the original decision and annulled the fine," Google announced. The case concerned a very limited category of text-only search ads placed on the websites of a small number of publishers.

With "AdSense for Search", other websites can integrate Google search masks and provide services in return. Financially, "AdSense" is more of a niche product for Google. According to the US tech giant, it had already made changes to the model before the EU Commission's decision.

Tech companies in the sights
For years, Brussels has been struggling with how to prevent distortions of competition caused by the giant tech companies. In addition to laws such as the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which is intended to combat the dominance of large online platforms, the EU Commission's competition watchdogs have imposed several fines totaling a good eight billion euros on Google in recent years. Although the company quickly digested these with its booming online advertising business, in some cases it had to change its business model.

Just last week, Google suffered a defeat at the ECJ: The judges confirmed a fine of 2.4 billion euros imposed by the EU Commission in connection with Google's price comparison service Google Shopping. The tech giant had abused its market power by favoring the results of its own price comparison service over those of its competitors on the page for general search results. Google had already made changes here before the ruling.