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Brussels fined Google €4.343 million in 2018 for applying illegal restrictions on Android device makers to entrench its dominant position. The General Court of the European Union reduced the amount, but upheld the ruling that can be appealed to the Supreme Court of Justice.
The European Union’s antitrust authority has imposed a total of 8.25 billion euros in antitrust fines on Google, the world’s most popular Internet search engine, in three investigations dating back more than a decade.
One of them, imposed in 2018 for 4,340 million euros, was ratified this Wednesday, September 14, by the General Court of the European Union, which decided to modestly reduce it to 4,125 million euros when resolving a challenge from the company.
It remains, however, a record amount for an antitrust violation, as well as the second court defeat for Google, which lost a similar challenge to a €2.42bn fine last year.
Big technology, in the crosshairs for abuse of dominant position
The ruling is a boost for European Union antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager, who has made her lobbying against so-called “Big Tech” a hallmark of her administration.
Vestager is currently investigating Google’s digital advertising business, Apple’s app store rules, Meta data usage, and Amazon’s online marketplace and sales practices.
In this particular case of Google, the community bloc’s competition regulator considered that the subsidiary of the American technology giant Alphabet used its Android mobile operating system to frustrate competition from its rivals.
“Google imposed illegal restrictions on Android mobile device manufacturers and mobile network operators to consolidate the dominant position of its search engine,” the general court explained.
Specifically, the European antitrust authorities believe that Google forced these manufacturers to install the Google Search search engine and the Google Chrome browser in exchange for giving them the license of its Google Play application store.
Google, which can appeal the ruling to the European Court of Justice, Europe’s highest court, expressed disappointment that the fine was slightly reduced, but not eliminated.
Android has created more options for everyone, not less, and supports thousands of successful businesses in Europe and around the world.
With Reuters, AP and EFE
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