The amount of fines that Google has to pay in Europe may be slightly reduced. He persuaded the European Union’s General Court to overturn a 1.5 billion euro ($1.7 billion) fine imposed against him in 2019, according to the European Commission.abusive practices in online advertising.” according to Financial TimesThe General Court agreed with the commission’s assessment that Google blocked competing advertisers from its platform. However, he argued that the commission did not consider “all the relevant circumstances” when assessing how long the company had engaged in anti-competitive practices.
The commission, chaired by competition chief Margrethe Vestager, found in 2019 that Google banned competitors’ search ads on its search results pages from 2006 to 2009. eliminated the restriction clause in their contracts. The fine for this particular case was larger than expected because the commission said it took into account the “duration and gravity of the violation.”
“This case concerns a very narrow subset of text-only search ads placed on the websites of a limited number of publishers,” Google said in a statement. Financial Times. “We made changes to our contracts in 2016 to eliminate the relevant provisions even before the commission’s decision. We are pleased that the court recognized the errors in the initial decision and canceled the fine. We will carefully review the full decision.” Meanwhile, the commission told the publication that it will “carefully study the judgment and consider possible next steps.” He can still appeal the court’s decision.
This is just one of the many antitrust fines the European Commission has levied against Google in recent years. Earlier this month, the EU’s highest court defended a separate $2.7 billion fine against the company. The commission imposed this fine on Google back in 2017 because the company, as Vestager explained, “abused its market advantage as a search engine by promoting its own comparison shopping service in search results and undermining those of its competitors.” discovered.
Vestager is fall down from his role as EU competition commissioner in the next few weeks. He has been tough on big tech companies throughout his tenure, and his market abuses over the years led to the creation of the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which aims to prevent the industry’s biggest players from abusing their power. market power.
