In surprise ruling, EU court scraps $1.65 billion antitrust fine against Google

BRUSSELS (CN) — In an unexpected decision, an 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 European Commission had “committed errors in its assessment” of the search giant’s advertising contracts with publishers.

Between 2017 and 2019, the European Commission had slapped Google with fines worth a total of 8.2 billion euros ($9.1 billion) over antitrust violations.

Wednesday’s ruling was the third of those fines, which the EU’s executive imposed in 2019 after finding that Google abused its dominance via its AdSense advertising service. It accused the tech giant of having prevented websites from using brokers other than its AdSense platform that provided search ads.

The practices the commission had deemed illegal took place from 2006 to 2016.

Google appealed to the EU court to annul, either fully or partially, the EU executive’s decision, along with scrapping or lowering the fine.

While the Luxembourg-based court mostly agreed with the EU competition enforcer’s assessments of the case, it annulled the fine due to procedural errors.

“The General Court holds that the commission has also not demonstrated that the clauses in question had, first, possibly deterred innovation, next, helped Google to maintain and strengthen its dominant position on the national markets for online search advertising at issue and last, that they had possibly harmed consumers,” the judges said in their statement.

Wednesday’s ruling presents a rare loss for the EU’s outgoing antitrust czar Margrethe Vestager, who last week scored two major Big Tech court wins against Google in a separate case and against Apple’s tax deal with Ireland.

The European Commission, which can appeal to the EU Court of Justice, said it would “carefully study the judgment” and reflect on possible next steps.

“We are pleased that the court has recognized errors in the original decision and annulled the fine,” Google said in a statement. “We will review the full decision closely.”

The EU executive is currently also in the final stages of another probe into Google’s advertising technology where it has threatened a potential breakup of the company’s services.