AFP – Google suffered a legal blow at the European Court of Justice yesterday when the body’s adviser recommended that a EUR2.4-billion (USD2.6-billion) fine levied on it for anti-competitive practices be upheld.
Although such opinions are not binding, they do carry weight and are often followed by European Union (EU) judges in their rulings.
In this case, the opinion will feed into a legal battle Google has been waging to overturn the fine the European Commission hit it with in 2017.
The commission determined that Google abused its dominant position by favouring its own Google Shopping service in results from its ubiquitous search engine.
Google, owned by United States tech titan Alphabet, was forced to change how it displays search results. At the time the fine was a record.
But it was overtaken in 2018 by a EUR4.3-billion penalty Brussels levied on Google for putting restrictions on Android smartphones to boost its Internet search business.
Google lost a first round in its challenge over the Google Shopping case when the lower EU General Court in 2021 found against it and upheld the commission’s penalty.
However, that court did dismiss part of the commission’s case by saying it had not proven that there were anti-competitive effects in the search engine market.
