Google doesn’t give up, new appeal against the EU Antitrust
Google has made a last-ditch effort at Europe's top court to annul the 2.42 billion euro fine it received from the EU Antitrust in 2017 for abuse of a dominant position related to its shopping service
Google à la guerre in Europe.
The Mountain View tech giant turned to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) after the EU Court rejected its appeal in 2021 to the fine imposed by the European antitrust for abuse of a dominant position with its shopping service ( Google Shopping).
In 2017, Brussels imposed a record fine of 2.42 billion euros on Big G for having “abused its dominant position on the search market to promote its comparison shopping service in its results, downgrading those of its competitors. What he did was illegal under antitrust rules,” Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager explained at the time. It was the first of three sanctions for anti-competitive practices that have cost Google a total of 8.25 billion euros over the last decade, Reuters recalls.
In November 2021, the General Court of the European Union rejected Google's appeal against the fine imposed by the EU Antitrust for abuse of a dominant position.
But the tech giant does not intend to let go and is now appealing the 2021 ruling that upheld the commission's decision.
This case, and two others involving the Android mobile operating system and the AdSense advertising service, are cases the company is appealing, reports Bloomberg .
But they pale in comparison to the ongoing EU antitrust case over Google's lucrative digital advertising business, where regulators in June are threatening to break up the company, Reuters reports.
Without forgetting that, on the other side of the Atlantic, the trial began on September 12 for the lawsuit brought by the US Department of Justice against Google 's search engine monopoly.
All the details.
GOOGLE'S APPEAL AGAINST THE EU FINE
Now Google accuses the EU of having exaggerated by imposing a fine of 2.4 billion euros for how it favored its own shopping services to the detriment of rivals.
Google lawyer Thomas Graf said the European Commission had failed to demonstrate that the company's different treatment of rivals was abusive and that the different treatment alone was not anti-competitive.
“Companies don't compete by treating competitors the same as themselves. They compete by treating them differently. The main purpose of competition is for a company to differentiate itself from rivals. Don't align yourself with rivals so that they are all equal,” the company's lawyer told the court.
“Qualifying any different treatment, and in particular the different treatment of first-party and third-party companies, as abusive would undermine competition. It would compromise companies' ability and incentives to compete and innovate,” Graf said.
THE POSITION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION
The commission on Tuesday rejected Google's arguments as "misrepresenting and distorting" the EU decision and the lower court's ruling.
Commission lawyer Fernando Castillo de la Torre said the company had used its algorithms to unfairly favor its price comparison shopping service, in breach of EU antitrust laws.
“Google had the right to apply algorithms that reduce the visibility of certain results that were less relevant to a user's query,” the Commission's lawyer said. “What Google had no right to do was exploit its dominant position in general search to extend its position in comparison shopping by promoting the results of its own services, embellishing them with attractive features and applying algorithms that tend to push down rivals' results and show those results without attractive features,” he said.
The CJEU will rule in the coming months.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/google-non-si-arrende-nuovo-ricorso-contro-antitrust-ue/ on Wed, 20 Sep 2023 05:41:18 +0000.