Google has lost a court appeal against the EUR 2.4 billion competition fine imposed on the company in 2017 by the European Commission. The EU's General Court upheld the finding that Google abused its dominant position on the search market by favouring its own comparison shopping service over rival services in search results.
The court largely rejected Google's arguments, saying the European Commission showed conclusively the harmful effects on competition from Google's practices. There was no objective justification for Google to favour its own service, such as technical considerations or efficiency gains, the court said, as the aim of the search engine should be to show merely the best results, with equal treatment for all providers.
Since the initial decision in this case, the Commission has imposed more multi-billion-euro fines on Google, all of which remain subject to appeal. In 2018, the company was fined EUR 4.3 billion for illegal restrictions on sellers of Android smartphones, followed by a fine of EUR 1.5 billion for competition violations with its AdSense platform. A new investigation into Google's role on the online advertising market was started by the Commission in June this year.
