The EU General Court has overturned a €1.49 billion fine against Google in an antitrust case where Google had blocked the use of ad brokers other than AdSense.
On September 18, 2024, the European Union's
Google AdSense: The General Court annuls the Commission's decision - cp240143en.pdf
(PDF file) https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2024-09/cp240143en.pdf
Google wins EU antitrust fine fight but setback for Qualcomm | Reuters
EU court scraps €1.49B antitrust fine against Google, mostly upholds Qualcomm penalty - SiliconANGLE
https://siliconangle.com/2024/09/18/eu-court-scraps-e1-49b-antitrust-fine-google-mostly-upholds-qualcomm-penalty/
The fine was imposed by the European Commission (EC) in 2019, after the company was found to have violated EU antitrust laws by obstructing the use of ad brokers other than AdSense between 2006 and 2016 in order to consolidate the monopoly position of its search advertising service, AdSense.
Google was not satisfied with this order and appealed to the General Court, which on September 18, 2024 upheld the majority of the EC's decision but set aside the fines against Google for not taking into account all the relevant circumstances.
'The EC has not demonstrated that Google's efforts may have stifled innovation or helped it to establish and maintain a dominant position in the national market for online search advertising, or that these may cause harm to consumers,' the General Court noted.
In response to the decision, Google said: 'This case concerns a narrow subset of text-only search ads on a limited number of publisher websites. We amended our AdSense contracts in 2016 to remove provisions that potentially violated antitrust laws. We are pleased that the Court found the EC wrong and overturned the fine.'
The EC could appeal to the European Court of Justice (CJEU), the EC's highest court, but it declined to say whether it would appeal, saying it would 'analyze the ruling and consider its next steps.'
Related Posts:
in Web Service, Posted by log1r_ut