(VOR News) – In its appeal against a €1.5 billion competition punishment ordered by the European Commission, Google has had success.
The Big Tech group won this one. Brussels’ regulatory authorities are intensifying their probe of the company simultaneously as this comes to light.
Although it agreed with “most of the commission’s assessments” that the company had used its dominant position to exclude competitor online advertisers, the General Court of the European Union (EU) announced on Wednesday that it had reversed the significant fine that had been imposed against Google in the previous case.
The corporation had been charged with excluding rivals from online advertising by exploiting its strong position.
The competition chief for the bloc, Margrethe Vestager, said that starting in 2006 and running until 2016, the search behemoth had imposed anti-competitive limitations on third-party websites for ten years.
This was said in reference to the 2019 start of litigation against Google.
The €1.5 billion fine she defended by saying it was reasonable would reflect the “serious and sustained nature” of the infraction. She also said the fine was reasonable.
The commission—the executive part of the European Union—had failed, according to the General Court, which is based in Luxembourg, “to take into account all the relevant circumstances in its assessment of the duration of the contractual clauses that it had found to be unfair.” This was the General Court’s conclusion.
Following the ruling, the commission released a statement saying it “took note” of the outcome and that it “will carefully study the verdict and reflect on possible next steps.” Given the outcome, it is expected the commission will launch an appeal.
Google has asserted that this issue is related to a very specific subset of text-only search ads put on a limited number of websites controlled by publishers. We changed our contracts in 2016 to cut out sections pertinent to the issue. These changes were done even prior to the commission’s conclusion announcement.
We are relieved that the court decided to reverse the fine as it acknowledged that the previous decision included mistakes. The whole decision will be closely studied with great thoroughness.
Over the past few years, the European Union has launched three distinct actions against Google, resulting in fines of around 8.25 billion euros across all.
Google got these laws from the EU.
Antitrust action has been accused of being too slow and ineffectual; some have claimed that the massive technological business has already taken over the online advertising sector.
The European Commission (EC) suffered a major blow on Wednesday following the ruling of the European Court of Justice, which said that the search engine had abused its market power by ranking its shopping services higher than those of its rivals.
In another case, the commission had before triumphed over Google. This follows the accomplishment of the commission already. At that time, Google was fined twenty-24 billion euros, which the highest court in the European Union affirmed.
About Google’s dominant position in the advertising technology sector, Brussels has not yet decided about the lawsuit the company has been targeted with. Brussels had threatened to split the company at the end of the previous year, as the only practical way to allay worries about competition.
Those who directly know the current state of affairs claim that the European Union is still debating whether or not to act on the threat and apply more fines to Google. These people know personally the continuous problem.
Vestager has charged technology businesses with not adhering to European Union standards developed here. She is preparing to leave her role as antitrust enforcer in the next weeks, hence this claim comes as natural.
Not one, not two, not three, but I am working on my fourth Google lawsuit right now in a recent Financial Times interview. “I have not dealt with any of these cases using Google.” The fact that successful market players still believe they shouldn’t compete according to their qualities is an intriguing phenomenon that makes one reflect.
SOURCE: FT
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