Google won a court challenge on Wednesday against the €1.49 billion EU antitrust fine that was imposed in 2019 for anti-trust violations related to its digital advertising business.
Since 2003, Google has managed an ad intermediation platform called AdSense, which allows third-party websites to display Google ads in response to user queries. In 2019, the European Commission fined Google’s AdSense business for imposing restrictive contracts on third-party websites, limiting their ability to display ads from rival platforms. The European Commission found that this practice was an abuse of Google’s dominant market position and infringed Article. 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) and Article 54 of the European Economic Area (EEA) Agreement.
The EU’s General Court ruled that the European Commission erred by failing to demonstrate, to the required legal standard, that Google’s exclusivity clause in contracts with direct partners effectively deterred these partners from working with competing intermediaries. The Commission also did not prove that the clause prevented competitors from accessing a significant part of the online search advertising market in the EEA. Additionally, the court found insufficient evidence to support the claims that the clause hindered innovation, reinforced Google’s dominant market position, or harmed consumers.
The ruling can be appealed to the EU Court of Justice but only on points of law.
Qualcomm Inc. also sought to annul a European Commission decision from 2019, which found the company guilty of predatory pricing practices under Article 102 of the TFEU and Article 54 of the EEA Agreement. The contested decision involved allegations that Qualcomm had engaged in anti-competitive behavior to eliminate rivals in the market for certain semiconductor products.
The court rejected all of Qualcomm’s legal arguments except for one, agreeing that the European Commission had not adhered to the proper guidelines for calculating the fine. The penalty was slightly reduced to €238.7 million.
