Google Wins A$2.45 Billion EU Court Fight Fine Over Online Ads Dominance

While Google lost a massive EU court case last week seeking to overturn a €2.4 billion (A$3.93 billion) fine for abusing its monopoly power to crush rival shopping services, this week it has had better success by winning a court battle with the European Union over a smaller €1.5 billion (A$2.45 billion) fine for thwarting competition for online ads.

Judges at the EU’s General Court in Luxembourg on Wednesday backed Google’s opposition to paying the fine handed to it in 2019, saying regulators were mostly correct in their findings but made key mistakes in their probe linked to the duration of the alleged wrongdoing, according to Bloomberg.

The European Commission had concluded that Google — as a dominant online ad broker — illegally prevented rivals such as Yahoo and Microsoft from placing ads on third-party websites.

EU regulators targeted Google’s role as an ad broker for websites, where the AdSense for Search product placed advertising on platforms including newspaper websites, blogs and travel sites.

The regulators who issued the fine contended that Google’s contracts with websites prevented them from accepting rival search ads from the likes of Microsoft and Yahoo.

When a user would input a query on a Google search box on websites, ads from such rivals were blocked. The problematic contracts were all dropped by 2016.

Despite confirming “the majority of the commission’s findings,” judges in Wednesday’s ruling said that regulators blundered in their assessment of the duration of the disputed clauses, as well as the part of the market covered by them during 2016.

The EU commission “has not established that the three clauses it had identified each constituted an abuse of a dominant position and, together, a single and continuous infringement” of antitrust rules, the court said.

After the ruling, Google said it’s “pleased that the court has recognised errors in the original decision and annulled the fine.” EU regulators can still appeal the latest ruling at the bloc’s top tribunal, the Court of Justice.

Google’s conduct in the ad space is also coming under pressure in another court battle across the Atlantic in a case brought by the US Justice Department against Google in a US court. The antitrust trial, which began last week, has already heard testimony that Google’s aims was “crush” rival advertising network and that the company’s strength in the ad tech business meant that it could act as a monopoly in this space, with even some of its largest competitors unable to rival its dominance.