Google faces another test in EU court over 1.5bn euro fine

Pravin Gordhan’s body leaves his family home in Pretoria. 
Pravin Gordhan’s body leaves his family home in Pretoria. 
BRUSSELS – An EU court will rule on Wednesday on Google’s appeal of a 1.49-billion euro ($1.65-billion) fine from the European Union, a week after the US tech giant suffered a stinging legal defeat over a bigger penalty.
Regulators worldwide are turning up the heat on Google parent Alphabet with trials and probes into one of the world’s most valuable companies.
Brussels scored a victory last week when the EU’s highest court in Luxembourg upheld a 2017 fine worth 2.42 billion euros against Google, for abusing its dominant position by favouring its own comparison shopping service.
Leading the way forward in targeting big tech abuses, the European Commission slapped Google with fines worth a total of 8.2 billion euros between 2017 and 2019 over antitrust violations.
At stake on Wednesday is the third of those fines, worth 1.49 billion euros, which the EU’s powerful antitrust regulator imposed after finding that Google abused its dominance via its AdSense advertising service.
The Luxembourg-based General Court will publish its decision on Google’s appeal against the fine after 0730 GMT.
Google asked the court to annul — in full or partially — the commission’s decision and/or annul or cut the fine.
The long-running legal battles between Google and the EU do not end there.
Google is also challenging a 4.3-billion-euro penalty Brussels levied on it for putting restrictions on Android smartphones to boost its internet search business.
The 2018 fine remains the EU’s largest-ever antitrust penalty.
The General Court in 2022 slightly reduced the fine to 4.1 billion euros, but mainly supported the commission’s argument that Google had imposed illegal restrictions.
The legal saga continues in that case after Google appealed the latest decision before the higher European Court of Justice.
The EU has since armed itself with a more powerful legal weapon known as the Digital Markets Act (DMA), to rein in the world’s biggest tech companies, including Google.
Rather than regulators discovering egregious antitrust violations after probes lasting many years, the DMA gives businesses a list of what they can and cannot do online.
The aim is that tech titans change their ways before the need for deterrent fines.
Google is already the subject of one investigation under the DMA alongside Facebook owner Meta and Apple.