Google Wins EU Case, Avoids Billion-Dollar Fine

Google has achieved a significant victory in the case filed by the European Commission in 2019 over alleged anti-competitive practices in the online advertising market. The General Court of the European Union (EU) announced its decision on Wednesday (18), The company will not have to pay a fine of 1.5 billion euros, equivalent to R$9 billion at today’s exchange rate.

At the time, the European regulator The tech giant allegedly abused its dominance in search and digital advertising to impose restrictions on contracts with third-party websitesAs a result, the Mountain View company will be prevented from placing ads from its rival platforms on such pages.

The EU competition authority has focused on the AdSense for Search (ADS) program. offers website owners the ability to add ads to search resultsIn this case, Google acts as an intermediary connecting advertisers and pages.

According to the European Commission, Big Tech’s anti-competitive practices related to ADS occurred over a 10-year period between 2006 and 2016. It therefore imposed a fine equivalent to R$9 billion, prompting Google to appeal the sanction three months after the decision.

Evaluation errors

Despite accepting most of the Commission’s conclusions regarding Google’s alleged illegal practices, The EU General Court has ruled that the institution made a mistake when assessing advertising contracts signed with websites. It was also not checked whether the owners have the option to use different advertising platforms.

Thus, the judges decided to cancel the billion-dollar fine imposed on the search giant. The authors of the case may appeal the annulment decisionA spokesman for the commission said the institution would analyse the situation before making a new decision.

A frequent target of antitrust actions in the European Union and the United States Google Needed to Make Changes to How Google Shopping and Android Work in Europe To avoid other penalties.