For the second time in a week, Google is facing a defeat in court. Once again, the accusation is that it is distorting competition. A lot of money is at stake.
On Wednesday, the EU General Court will once again consider a competition penalty against Google. In 2019, the EU Commission imposed a fine of 1.49 billion euros and accused Google of abusive practices in online advertising. It was said at the time that other providers were improperly hindered in search engine advertising in the “AdSense for Search” service. With “AdSense for Search”, other websites can integrate Google search masks. Financially, “AdSense” is more of a niche product for Google. The tech giant says it made changes to the model before the EU Commission’s decision and then fought against the penalty before the EU General Court, which is now announcing its ruling.
The decision can then be challenged before the EU’s highest court, the European Court of Justice (ECJ).
Last week, Google suffered a defeat before the European Court of Justice: 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 giving preference to the results of its own price comparison service over those of the competition on the general search results page. Google had already made changes here before the ruling.
Brussels has been wrangling for years about how to prevent distortions of competition 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 competition watchdogs of the EU Commission have hit Google with several fines totaling a good eight billion euros in recent years. The company quickly digested these with its booming online advertising business, but in some cases had to change its business model.
Source: Stern
