The Court of Justice of the European Union has dismissed Google’s appeal and upheld the fine of €2.4 billion levied in 2017. Google’s parent company, Alphabet, also a party to the case, generated $87.4 billion (€7.85bn) in revenues and $23.6 billion (€2.12bn) in net income in the second quarter of 2024. The fine, therefore, amounts to about 3 percent of the revenues or 11 percent of net income in Alphabet’s latest quarter.
Back in 2017, the European Commission found, in the court’s words, that Google had “abused its dominant position in several national online search markets by favoring its own comparison shopping service over those of its competitors.”
In 13 countries of the European Economic Area (EEA), the EU says, Google presented search results from its own service in a “primary position” and “promoted them in ‘boxes’ with accompanying attractive image and text information.” The results of competing services appeared as “simple generic results” and “prone to being demoted” by Google’s algorithms.
Google and Alphabet challenged the decision in November 2021 before the EU’s General Court, which was sympathetic to Google in part. It “did not consider it proven that Google’s practice had had – even potentially – anticompetitive effects on the market for general search services” and therefore annulled the Commission’s decision with respect to the alleged abuse in the market for general search.
The Court’s statement, available online, includes an encapsulation of EU law on monopoly power: “The Court of Justice recalls that EU law does not sanction the existence of a dominant position per se, but only the abusive exploitation thereof. In particular, the conduct of undertakings in a dominant position that has the effect of hindering competition on the merits and is thus likely to cause harm to individual undertakings and consumers is prohibited.”
