(CercleFinance.com) – The Court of Justice of the European Union delivered its judgment on Wednesday concerning the appeal filed by Google (Alphabet) against the fine for abuse of a dominant position imposed on it in 2018 by the Commission European.
The Luxembourg-based court largely upheld Brussels’ ruling that Google imposed illegal restrictions on Android mobile device makers and mobile network operators to consolidate its search engine’s dominant position.
In order to take better account of the gravity and duration of the infringement, the General Court nevertheless considered it appropriate to impose a fine of €4.125 billion on Google.
The Court specifies that its reasoning differs on certain points from that of the Commission since it considers that it is above all the revenue-sharing agreements which constitute, in themselves, an abuse.
Under these provisions, Google pays a portion of its advertising revenue to manufacturers and operators on the condition that the latter waive the pre-installation of a competing search engine on their devices.
For the record, the Commission had initially imposed on Google a fine of nearly 4.343 billion euros, the largest fine ever imposed in Europe by a competition authority.
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