A small rebate is all that the court of the European Union granted to Google. As explained many months ago, the online search giant was condemned by the European Commission for abuse of a dominant position regarding its mobile operating system. Brussels accused the Mountain View firm of forcing the hand of manufacturers using Android by making them preinstall its search engine and Chrome browser, in order to eliminate all competition. Google was then fined a record 4.34 billion euros, a decision that the company wanted to reverse.
The Luxembourg court of the EU examined the file again in order to validate, or not, the decision of the Commission. And if justice maintained the sanction, it nevertheless had “a reasoning which differs on certain points from that of the Commission”deciding to reduce the fine to 4.12 billion euros.
Court largely upholds original decision and disregards Google’s defense of competition with Apple’s ecosystem “which is not in the same market, as third-party mobile device manufacturers cannot license it”. The court ruled, however, that the Commission failed to allow Google to properly defend itself, as explained in the court’s press release: “[La commission] violated Google’s rights of defense and thus deprived the latter of a chance to better ensure its defense by developing its arguments during a hearing”.
This is not the first time that Europe has condemned the Californian giant. The Commission had also imposed a fine of 2.4 billion euros on the company for anti-competitive practices in the price comparison market. Ditto for its AdSense advertising network, which cost Google another fine of 1.5 billion euros in 2019. That of the day, however, is a record. The company, whose European headquarters are in Ireland, tax optimization requires, is definitely a bad student in the eyes of the Old Continent.