Google loses appeal against EU’s $2.7B Shopping antitrust case, as bloc also wins $15B Apple state aid appeal
Google has once again lost in its bid to overturn a 2017 antitrust decision by the European Commission.
Google has once again lost in its bid to overturn a 2017 antitrust decision by the European Commission. The bloc found its shopping comparison service had broken competition rules — hitting Alphabet, Google’s parent, with an at-the-time record-breaking €2.42 billion penalty (around $2.7 billion at current exchange rates) and ordering changes to how it operates the service.
Google appealed the decision and, in November 2021, the General Court of the European Union largely dismissed the challenge. It confirmed that self-preferencing its own shopping service in general search results was anti-competitive, harming rival shopping comparison services, and upholding the Commission’s penalty. However, the Court did find the Commission had not established that Google’s conduct could have had anticompetitive effects on the market for general search services as a whole — hence annulling that portion of the finding.
Google appealed against the EU’s decision a second time, petitioning the EU’s highest court — the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) — which on Tuesday handed down another ruling that won’t be to the search giant’s liking.
The CJEU agreed with the General Court’s analysis. “[I]n light of the characteristics of the market and the specific circumstances of the case, Google’s conduct was discriminatory and did not fall within the scope of competition on the merits,” the court wrote in a press release.
Commenting on the Google Shopping case at a press conference this morning local time, the EU’s competition chief Margrethe Vestager dubbed it “a landmark in the history of regulatory actions against Big Tech companies”. “It was one of the first significant antitrust cases brought by a competition agency against a major digital company and I think this case marked a pivotal shift in how digital companies were regulated and also perceived,” she suggested.
In further remarks on the CJEU ruling, she said: “The Court of Justice confirms that, in certain circumstances, the favorable treatment of its own services by a dominant company can be a breach of Article 9(2) of the European treaty. This important judgment validates the Commission’s approach to such practices.
“We call them self preferencing. Of course a dominant company, as any other company, are free to innovate in all fields but in doing so they should compete on the merits of their innovation. However, they cannot lean on the competitive advantage that they hold because of their market power.”
“Going forward, the Commission will, of course, make sure that the principle enshrined in this judgment — which is now final — is upheld to the benefits of all European consumers,” she added.
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