LONDON (AP) — Google on Wednesday won a court case against a 1.49 billion euro ($1.66 billion) fine imposed by the European Union five years ago over its online advertising activities.
The General Court of the EU has ruled that it is annulling a 2019 fine imposed by the European Commission, the lead enforcer of the EU’s antitrust policy across 27 countries.
“The General Court annuls the Commission’s decision in its entirety,” the Court said in a press release.
The commission’s ruling concerned a small part of Google’s advertising business: ads that the US tech giant sold alongside Google’s search results on third-party websites.
Regulators accused Google of including exclusivity clauses in its contracts that prohibited those websites from running ads similarly sold by Google’s rivals. The commission said in imposing the fine that Google’s behavior left advertisers and website owners with less choice and was likely to face higher prices that would be passed on to consumers.
But the court said the commission “erred” in its assessment of those clauses. The commission failed to show that Google’s contracts stifle innovation, harmed consumers or helped the company maintain and strengthen its dominant position in national online search advertising markets, it said.
The ruling can be appealed, but only in cassation, to the Court of Justice, the bloc’s highest court.
The commission said in a brief statement that it “will carefully study the verdict and consider possible next steps.”
Google said it amended its contracts to remove the relevant provisions in 2016, before the commission made its decision.
“We are pleased that the court acknowledged errors in the original decision and overturned the fine,” Google said in a statement. “We will review the full decision closely.”
The company’s legal victory comes a week after it lost a final EU court case over its comparison shopping service, which also saw it handed a hefty fine.
They were among three antitrust fines totaling around €8 billion that the commission had imposed on Google in the previous decade, marking the beginning of an era of increased scrutiny of Big Tech companies.
Since then, Google has faced mounting pressure on both sides of the Atlantic over its digital advertising business. The company is currently battling the Justice Department in a U.S. federal court over allegations that its dominance over the technology that controls the sale of billions of internet display ads constitutes an illegal monopoly.
Britain’s competition authorities this month accused the company of abusing its dominant position in the country’s digital advertising market and favouring its own services.
The EU launched its own investigation with competition authorities and said last year that breaking up the company was the only way to address concerns about the company’s digital advertising business.
