Google loses €2.4bn EU antitrust case for favouring its own shopping service

As the second day of the Justice Department’s antitrust case against Google got underway, the EU upheld a €2.4 billion antitrust fine against the company. I  a win for the European Commission, the EU Court of Justice  upheld on 10 September a record-breaking €2.4 billion fine imposed on Google for anti-competitive promotion of its Shopping service.

It’s one of a pair of victories for EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager in her battle against big tech, as judges also agreed with her in a €13bn case involving the low tax bills paid by Apple in Ireland.

Background of the Case

The fine comes from a 2017 case in which EU regulators said Google abused its dominant market position in favoring its own shopping comparison service, Google Shopping, in search results, disadvantaging competitors. The company and its parent company Alphabet were ordered to pay a fine that was, at the time, the greatest ever imposed by the Commission under its tough antitrust powers.  In 2017, Google made changes that put it on equal footing with competitors when bidding for advertising slots within shopping search results.

Google failed in a bid to challenge the decision before the EU’s General Court, before appealing to the senior EU Court of Justice. “In the light of the characteristics of the market and the specific circumstances of the case, Google’s conduct was discriminatory and did not fall within the scope of competition on the merits,” judges said today, dismissing the appeal by Google and its parent company Alphabet.

Google presented the search results of its product comparator first, highlighting them with attractive visual and textual information, while results from rivals came lower down as a link, the Commission had said. The ruling confirms an advisory opinion from Juliane Kokott, one of the Advocates-General of the Court, who in January said that Google “was leveraging its dominant position on the market for general search services to favour its own comparison shopping service”.

Impact and Statements

Competition Commissioner Margrete Vestager said at a press conference that the case is “a landmark in the history of regulatory action.” “It is one of the first cases against a major digital company, and this marked a shift in how companies were regulated and perceived. This paved the way for the Digital Markets Act,” she said. The EU ruling comes just four days after the UK ruled “that Google is using anti-competitive practices in open-display ad tech.”

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