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MUMBAI: The battle over Google’s ad business is proving to be less about clicks and more about courtrooms. The Alphabet-owned technology giant has urged Europe’s highest court to uphold the cancellation of a €1.49 billion ($1.7 billion) antitrust fine, arguing that the European Commission’s latest appeal is built on legally flawed arguments.
The case is now before the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) after the European Commission challenged a 2024 General Court ruling that scrapped the penalty originally imposed on Google in 2019. The lower court had found that the Commission made errors in its assessment of the case.
At the heart of the dispute is Google’s AdSense business. The Commission alleges that between 2006 and 2016, Google included restrictive clauses in agreements with website publishers that prevented rival companies from placing search advertisements on those sites, reinforcing Google’s dominance in the online search advertising market.
Google removed the disputed contractual provisions from its publisher agreements in 2016, but the Commission has continued pursuing the case as part of its broader antitrust <a href="https://absafricatv.com/eu-rejects-us-campaign-against-the-international-criminal-court/” title=”EU rejects US campaign against the International Criminal Court”>campaign against the company.
Appearing before a five-judge panel, Google’s lawyer Josh Holmes defended the General Court’s ruling, arguing that the regulator’s appeal fails both legally and factually.
“The Commission’s new arguments are flawed. The General Court’s reasons are clear and complete,” Holmes told the court.
He also argued that the Commission overlooked evidence showing Google’s competitors had meaningful opportunities to compete in the market, undermining the regulator’s claims that the contractual clauses shut out rivals.
Representing the Commission, lawyer Anthony Dawes countered that the General Court had departed from established competition law by imposing an unnecessary requirement for regulators to revisit legal principles already settled through earlier case law.
“This finding turns case law on its head,” Dawes argued, adding that the lower court’s reasoning could effectively make exclusive contractual clauses lawful by default.
A court adviser is scheduled to deliver a non-binding opinion on November 12, with the CJEU’s final judgment expected in the months that follow.
The AdSense dispute is one chapter in Google’s prolonged regulatory battle with the European Commission. Collectively, the EU has imposed €9.5 billion in antitrust penalties on the company across four separate competition cases. The General Court’s decision to overturn the AdSense fine remains one of the rare setbacks for the Commission in its campaign against Big Tech, making the final ruling from Europe’s highest court a closely watched test of the bloc’s competition enforcement.
