The European Union’s highest court has upheld a fine of €2.42 billion (CZK 60.7 billion) for US internet company Google of the Alphabet group. The European Commission (EC) fined the company years ago for abusing its dominant position on the market of price comparison services. The EU Court of Justice announced this in a press release today. Google said it was disappointed with the decision.
Google’s Appeal Rejected
The European Commission fined the firm in 2017 for Google using its own price comparison service to gain an unfair advantage against smaller European competitors. Both Alphabet and Google have appealed the decision. In 2021, the General Court of the Court of Justice of the EU rejected the appeal, and the firms appealed to the Supreme Court. Today, the Court upheld the General Court’s ruling.
“We are disappointed by the Court’s decision,” Google said in a response sent to the Czech News Agency. “This judgment concerns a very specific set of facts. We had already changed our product in 2017 to comply with the European Commission’s decision. This approach has been working successfully for more than seven years, generating billions of clicks for more than eight hundred comparison sites,” the US company added.
Penalty
The CJEU judges noted that EU law does not address the existence of a dominant position, but only its abuse. Acts by undertakings in a dominant position which restrict competition and are likely to cause harm to individual undertakings and consumers are prohibited.
This fine is one of three sanctions imposed by the EC on Google in the last decade for various antitrust infringements. The total value of the fines imposed is €8.25 billion.
Source: Czech Press Office
