Google has been dealt another legal blow in its battle against the EU when the EU General Court dismissed the search engine giant’s appeal against the EU Commission’s record antitrust fine of several billion euros. The fine that was given by the European Commission in 2017 was due to the company exploiting its dominance in the search advertisement market. It is a measure in a wider strategy in the regulation of Big Tech companies in the EU that seeks to implement measures against anti-competition regulations in the digital market. 

Highlights 

1- The EU General Court affirmed the European Commission’s decision to penalize Google for anti-competitive conduct. 

2- Google was again accused of operating wrongfully, in that it actively pushed its offerings while taking action that hindered the growth of its competitors. 

3- The rejected appeal encourages the EU to continue the ongoing campaign for making major tech firms more responsible for market manipulation. 

The original fine of €2. 42 billion was imposed after the European Commission said that Google abused the dominance of its search engine to promote its comparison shopping service at the expense of rivals. This was deemed as a gross violation of the EU antitrust laws that bar the dominant economic players from exercising their muscle through anti-competitive practices. 

Google stated that so they enhanced the user experience where they thought that the shopping service provider would become more useful to the users. 

However, the EU General Court argued that the above measures amount to abuse of process since they lock out competition and thus the consumers from accessing other service providers on the same favorable terms. This is not the first time the EU has raised its bat for anti-trust law against the industry giant Google. The company has also received several other antitrust fines in the past years which sum up to more than €8 Billion. The EU also continues to aggressively campaign for fair competition in the digital economy space through fines of these huge technology companies.

The case reveals a new conflict between Big Tech and EU courts that, together with national antitrust authorities, are gradually rising against the monopolists of digital platforms. This ruling also comes at the backdrop of EU’s continued efforts to safeguard competition in the market, a reason being that firms such as Google ought not to take undue advantage of their market power.

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