The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has rejected the appeal lodged by Google and its parent company, Alphabet, against the judgment of the General Court, which condemned it for anti-competitive practices.
The court ruling confirms the penalty of around €4.1 billion imposed for Google Search’s abuse of its dominant position in the context of the Android operating system, according to the ECJ's ruling on Thursday.
With no further appeal possible, it marks the end of a long legal standoff between the European Commission and the American tech giant.
In 2018, the European Commission concluded that Google had abused its dominant position by requiring that its search engine, Google Search and its Chrome browser, be promoted on mobile devices running the Android operating system, which is also provided by Google.
This was done, in particular, through pre-installation agreements and licensing conditions for certain apps.
According to the Commission, the objective of all those restrictions was to protect and strengthen Google’s dominant position on general search services – and therefore increase the US company's revenues through search advertisements.
On Thursday, the EU's highest court validated the judgment handed down by the General Court of the European Union in 2022. It found that sanctioning the anti-competitive practices of the American technology giant was warranted.
It also condemned the company's "anti-fragmentation" agreements, which prevented the sale of devices equipped with versions of Android not approved by Google, which was ruled to limit competition.
Google and Alphabet had argued that user preferences or the alleged quality of their services alone could justify this business practice.
However, this argument was rejected by the ECJ, which found that there was a status quo bias in favour of Google's pre-installed apps.
In its original ruling, the EU General Court had slightly reduced Google’s fine to €4.1 billion. Of this amount, more than €1.5 billion is jointly attributed to its parent company, Alphabet.
Approached for a response, a spokesperson for the European Commission told The Brussels Times on Thursday that it "takes note of the judgment which dismisses Google’s appeal against the General Court ruling of 14 September 2022 in its entirety."
