Court of Justice Upholds €2.4 Billion Google Shopping Fine

The original decision

By a decision of 27 June 2017, the Commission found that, in 13 countries of the European Economic Area, Google had given preference on its general search results pages to its own comparison shopping service over competing services. Google's results were shown in a primary position and promoted in boxes with images and text, while rival services appeared as generic blue links that were prone to being demoted by adjustment algorithms.

The Commission concluded that Google had abused its dominant position in the markets for online general search and specialised product search and imposed a fine of €2,424,495,000, for which Alphabet was jointly and severally liable for €523,518,000.

The appeal

In November 2021 the General Court largely dismissed Google's action and upheld the fine. It annulled the decision only insofar as the Commission had also found an infringement in the market for general search services, because anticompetitive effects in that market had not been proven.

The Court of Justice recalled that EU law does not sanction a dominant position as such, only its abuse. It accepted that a dominant company treating its own products more favourably than those of competitors does not, as a general rule, necessarily depart from competition on the merits. However, it found that the General Court had correctly established that, given the characteristics of the market and the specific circumstances of the case, Google's conduct was discriminatory and fell outside competition on the merits.

Why it matters

The judgment ends a long-running case and confirms that self-preferencing by a dominant platform can amount to an abuse under Article 102 TFEU where the market context makes it discriminatory. It is relevant to any business operating a platform that also competes with users of that platform.

Sources

• Court of Justice of the EU: Press Release No 135/24, Judgment in Case C-48/22 P Google and Alphabet v Commission (Google Shopping)
• European Commission: Antitrust: Commission fines Google €2.42 billion for abusing dominance as search engine