BRUSSELS - A 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. 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 remain.