Google is appealing a decision of the General Court of the EU. This largely confirms the Commission’s analysis of the abuse of a dominant position by the American company with Android.
Google fires cartridge after cartridge on its record fine of 4.12 billion euros, but without succeeding in bringing it down. Will his last salvo succeed in killing him this time? In any case, the American company is pursuing its legal remedies as long as it has any left. Thus, we learned on December 1, 2022 that the group was appealing a previous court decision.
The Mountain View firm has indicated that its new approach to the courts aims, it says, to obtain legal clarifications from the Court of Justice of the European Union. It is the second instance body of the EU. This is where appeals against judgments rendered by the Court of the Union go.
“Legal clarifications” that Google would especially like to see transformed into an outright cancellation, since the group is facing an exceptionally high fine. Pronounced in 2018 by the European Commission for abuse of a dominant position with Android, it was largely confirmed in 2022 by the Court.
Justice found that Google abused Android
In this case, the only and very slim success obtained by Google was to very slightly reduce the amount of the fine. Initially set at 4.34 billion euros, it was reduced to 4.12 billion this fall. It then remained for the web giant to decide whether it accepted this verdict or wished to continue its defence, without any certainty as to the outcome of the procedure.
The difference, of just over 200 million euros, appears anecdotal compared to the sums still at stake. Here, the judges of the General Court have a different assessment of the gravity and duration of the infringement alleged against Google. But this divergence of views has not fundamentally changed the problem: Google has established excessive requirements across its mobile operating system.
However, the Court also noted that the Commission, in its proceedings against the American company, ” violated Google’s rights of defense and thus deprived Google of a better chance to defend itself by developing its arguments during a hearing “. The Court also noted weaknesses in the arguments put forward by Brussels against Google.
The three disputes at the heart of the case are as follows:
- Requiring manufacturers to pre-install the Google search tool (Search) and browser (Chrome) as a condition of granting the license for its online application store (Play Store);
- Having paid major manufacturers and mobile operators to exclusively pre-install Google Search on their devices;
- Preventing manufacturers wishing to pre-install Google applications from selling even a single smart mobile device running on other versions of Android, not approved by Google (“Android forks”).
The procedure launched by Google prolongs a file now several years old – the reproaches addressed to the American company about Android go back even further.
This is currently the biggest dispute between Google and Brussels. Two other cases exist: the first resulted in a fine of 2.4 billion euros for unfair practices in the price comparison sector. The second led to a penalty of nearly 1.5 billion euros for illicit practices in the advertising sector, via its AdSense management.
