EU court scraps 1.5b euro fine against Google

BRUSSELS — An EU court on Wednesday scrapped a 1.49-billion euro ($1.65 billion) fine imposed by Brussels against Google for an abuse of dominance over online advertising.

"The General Court annuls the [European] Commission's decision in its entirety," the Luxembourg-based court said in a statement, adding that the "institution committed errors in its assessment".

Brussels "failed to take into consideration all the relevant circumstances in its assessment of the duration of the contract clauses that the commission had deemed abusive", the court said.

The commission, the EU's influential competition regulator, said it "takes note" and would "carefully study the judgment and reflect on possible next steps" — which could include an appeal.

The ruling will be a relief for Google after the EU's highest court last week upheld a 2017 fine worth 2.42 billion euros for abusing its dominance by favouring its own comparison shopping service.

As part of a major push to target big tech abuses, the EU slapped Google with fines worth a total of 8.2 billion euros between 2017 and 2019 over antitrust violations.

The 1.49-billion euro fine is the third of those penalties, focused on Google's AdSense service.

But the long-running legal battles between Google and the EU do not end there.

EU's greater powers 

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 tech giants 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.

Google is in the US regulators' crosshairs as well.

Last week, the tech titan faced its second major antitrust trial in less than a year with the US government accusing Google of a monopoly in ad technology — the complex system determining which online ads people see and their cost.

It comes after a US judge in August found Google's search business to be an illegal monopoly, a ruling which threatens a possible break-up for the tech behemoth.

Ad tech is at the centre of multiple probes by regulators around the world.

British regulators earlier this month said in provisional findings that Google abused its dominance in the market.

The EU similarly concluded last year that Google is distorting competition in the market and recommended that the company be forced to divest its ad tech business.

Google has the right to respond in the British and EU cases before the regulators reach final conclusions.

Parent company Alphabet in July said revenue from online ad searches climbed to $48.5 billion in the second quarter of this year.