On Tuesday (September 10th), Google lost its final legal battle with the European Commission, the EU's antitrust agency, ending a long-standing antitrust case.
The European Court of Justice on Tuesday upheld a landmark antitrust ruling by the European Commission in 2017.
At that time, after years of investigation, the European Commission ruled that Google abused its dominant position in the search engine field to provide higher rankings for its own shopping comparison service Google Shopping in the list, suppressing competitors' shopping services. The committee also imposed a huge fine of 2.42 billion euros (2.67 billion US dollars) on Google for this move.
After the European Commission's ruling, Google claimed to have made changes on its own to comply with the Commission's decision to treat competitors equally. At the same time, the company appealed the ruling to the European Court of Justice.
However, the lower court of the European Court of Justice, the EU General Court, rejected Google's appeal in 2021 and upheld the € 2.42 billion antitrust fine imposed on Google.
On Tuesday, the European Court of Justice upheld the lower court's ruling and dismissed Google's previous appeal against the European Commission's € 2.4 billion fine. The European Court of Justice stated in a press release that "the court dismissed the appeal and upheld the judgment of the ordinary court
Intensify regulatory efforts
If we talk about the key figure in Google's antitrust case, it must be Margrethe Vestager, Executive Vice President of the European Commission and Commissioner for Competition. After she became the EU Competition Commissioner in 2014, she made Google, a subsidiary of Alphabet, her top priority. This figure, known as the EU's' antitrust queen ', is about to end her second term in a few weeks.
Google's antitrust ruling in the EU is not limited to just Google Shopping. As the European Union began to intensify its crackdown on the technology industry, the European Commission later pointed out that Google's parent company Alphabet illegally abused the Android mobile operating system and Adsense advertising business, and imposed fines of 4.125 billion euros and 1.49 billion euros respectively for these two cases.
That is to say, Google faces fines totaling over 8 billion euros in three antitrust cases in the European Union.
Google later appealed against the other two antitrust penalties mentioned above. It is reported that Google encountered setbacks in the Android case, and the EU General Court upheld the European Commission's fine of 4.125 billion euros in its 2022 ruling; As for Google's preliminary appeal against the 1.49 billion euro fine in the AdSense case, the court has not yet made a ruling.
These three cases indicate that global regulatory agencies will intensify their efforts to crack down on the technology industry. The EU is currently conducting more investigations into large technology companies and drafting new laws to clean up social media platforms and regulate artificial intelligence.
At the same time, Google is also facing special pressure in its digital advertising business. The US Department of Justice previously accused the company of having a monopoly position in the advertising technology industry. On Monday (September 9), the case of the US Department of Justice suing Google for illegally monopolizing the digital advertising industry entered trial.