BRUSSELS, Sept 18 (Askume) – Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O) unit Google on Wednesday won a legal challenge against the European Union (EU) over a 1.49 billion euro ($1.7 billion) anti-competition fine, while Qualcomm ‘s (QCOM.O) unit failed to have it overturned.
The rulings underscore outgoing EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager’s record of defending crackdowns on big tech companies in court . Last week, she was involved in a separate case against Google and Apple over tax deals with Irish authorities.Two major victories were achieved .
In its 2019 ruling , the European Commission said Google abused its dominant position by preventing websites from using brokers other than the AdSense platform to display search ads. The Commission said these practices were illegal and continued from 2006 to 2016.
The Luxembourg-based General Court largely agreed with the EU competition enforcer’s assessment of the case, but annulled the fine and said the Commission had failed to take into account all relevant circumstances.
“The Commission also failed to prove that these provisions could, firstly, hinder innovation; secondly, help Google maintain and strengthen its dominant position in the domestic online search advertising market; and, finally, they could harm the interests of consumers,” the judges said.
Google said the issue involved a small number of text-only search ads placed on the websites of some publishers.
“We had already revised the contract in 2016 to remove the relevant clause prior to the Commission’s decision,” the company said in an email. “We are pleased that the court acknowledged the error in the original decision and removed the penalty.”
The Commission, which can appeal to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) on legal issues, said it would study the ruling and consider possible next steps.
The AdSense fine was one of three that cost Google a total of €8.25 billion. The fine was imposed after Microsoft (MSFT.O) filed a complaint in 2010 .
Last week, the companyIt was fined 2.42 billion euros for using a comparison shopping service to gain an unfair advantage over smaller European rivals , but eventually lost the case.
In the Qualcomm case, the US chipmaker successfully convinced the General Court to reduce its EU antitrust fine from 242 million euros to 238.7 million euros.
The judge rejected all his arguments. The commission imposed the fine in 2019, saying Qualcomm sold its chipsets below cost between 2009 and 2011 to thwart British phone software maker Icera, now Nvidia Corp (NVDA.O), in a practice known as predatory pricing.
The committee said that it has also taken note of the decision.
Qualcomm, which can appeal the legal issues to the European Court of Justice, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The cases are – T-334/19 Google and Alphabet v Commission (Google AdSense for search) and T-671/19 Qualcomm v Commission (Qualcomm – predatory pricing).
(1 USD = 0.8985 EUR)
