antitrust
Bulletins

EU court blesses Vestager's €2.4 billion Google shopping fine

The European Union's actions against the search giant get a boost with the ruling.

Margrethe Vestager gestures with both hands while speaking.
Margrethe Vestager speaks during an online news conference on the Apple antitrust case at the EU headquarters in Brussels.
Photo: Francisco Seco/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

A European Union court on Wednesday upheld a €2.4 billion ($2.77 billion) fine levied on Google in 2017 by the bloc's competition authority for the search giant's treatment of rival comparison shopping services.

"The General Court finds that, 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, Google departed from competition on the merits," said the court's decision, which rejected most of Google's appeal.

Margrethe Vestager, who is now the European Commission's executive vice president, oversaw the case that led to the fine. It was one of at least three major actions by European regulators against Google, leading to total fines of more than €8 billion ($9.2 billion) between 2017 and 2019. Future potential cases against Google may also now gain momentum with the court's approval in the shopping-comparison case.

A Google spokeswoman said the company was reviewing whether to appeal the court's decision and said its compliance with the prior order "has worked successfully for more than three years."

Ben Brody

Ben Brody (@ BenBrodyDC) is a senior reporter at Protocol focusing on how Congress, courts and agencies affect the online world we live in. He formerly covered tech policy and lobbying (including antitrust, Section 230 and privacy) at Bloomberg News, where he previously reported on the influence industry, government ethics and the 2016 presidential election. Before that, Ben covered business news at CNNMoney and AdAge, and all manner of stories in and around New York. He still loves appearing on the New York news radio he grew up with.

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