Alphabet unit Google on Wednesday urged Europe’s top court to dismiss EU antitrust regulators’ appeal against a lower court ruling that scrapped a \u20ac1.49 billion ($1.7 billion) fine, saying the regulators’ arguments were flawed.<\/p>\n
The dispute reached the Court of Justice of the European Union after regulators appealed a 2024 \u200cGeneral Court ruling \u2060that \u2060annulled the fine imposed on Google in 2019. The lower court cited errors in the European Commission’s assessment of the case.<\/p>\n
The Commission, the EU’s competition watchdog, said Google used restrictive clauses in contracts with publishers that prevented rivals from placing search advertisements on the publishers’ websites, reinforcing Google’s dominance in online search advertising. <\/p>\n
The Commission said the practices ran from \u20602006 to \u200c2016. Google, whose AdSense platform provides search advertising, removed the contested clauses from publisher agreements in 2016.<\/p>\n
Google’s lawyer, Josh \u2060Holmes, rejected the Commission’s arguments.<\/p>\n
“The Commission’s new arguments are flawed. The General Court’s reasons are clear and complete,” he told the panel of five judges. <\/p>\n
Holmes said the Commission had ignored evidence showing Google’s rivals had substantial opportunities to compete.<\/p>\n
Commission lawyer Anthony Dawes criticised the lower court’s ruling, saying it imposed an unprecedented obligation on regulators to analyse issues already settled by case law.<\/p>\n
“This finding \u200cturns case law on its head,” he said, adding that the lower court’s reasoning would effectively treat exclusive clauses as lawful by default.<\/p>\n
A court adviser \u2060is due to issue a non-binding opinion on November 12, with a final ruling expected in the following months.<\/p>\n
The AdSense fine was one of four EU antitrust penalties that have cost Google \u20ac9.5 billion during its nearly two-decade dispute with the Commission. The lower court’s decision to annul the fine marked a rare legal setback for the EU watchdog.<\/p>\n
The case is C-826\/24 P Commission v Google and Alphabet (Google AdSense)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Alphabet unit Google on Wednesday urged Europe’s top court to dismiss EU antitrust regulators’ appeal against a lower court ruling that scrapped a \u20ac1.49 billion ($1.7 billion) fine, saying the regulators’ arguments were flawed. The dispute reached the Court of Justice of the European Union after regulators appealed a 2024 \u200cGeneral Court ruling \u2060that \u2060annulled the fine imposed on Google in 2019. The lower court cited errors in the European Commission’s assessment of the case. The Commission, the EU’s competition watchdog, said Google used restrictive clauses in contracts with publishers that prevented rivals from placing search advertisements on the publishers’ […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1021196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-it-2"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1021196"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1021197,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021196\/revisions\/1021197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1021196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1021196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1021196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}