Google loses key appeal against €2.4 billion EU shopping antitrust case

The EU’s second-most senior court, the General Court, has upheld a 2017 ruling by the European Commission which found that Google broke antitrust law in how it promoted its shopping comparison service and demoted rivals.

Google and its parent company Alphabet had appealed the decision but the General Court said today it had dismissed that appeal and upheld a fine of €2.4 billion ($2.8 billion).

This outcome is significant as it’s the first time top EU judges have ruled on one of the EU’s signature antitrust cases pursued by the bloc’s influential competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager. In addition to the shopping comparison fine ruled in 2017, Vestager has pursued two other major antitrust cases against Google involving Android and AdSense. These rulings were made in 2018 and 2019 respectively, and the cases are now going through a similar appeal process to that involving Google Shopping.

In its judgement, the EU’s General Court said that Google broke antitrust law “by favouring its own comparison shopping service on its general results pages through more favourable display and positioning, while relegating the results from competing comparison services in those pages by means of ranking algorithms.”

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