Google Dodges €1.5B EU Ads Antitrust Fine After Appeal Win

Google has some thank-you cards to send, as the European Union's General Court (GC) has nullified a €1.49 billion ($1.66 billion) fine levied against the tech giant for anti-competitive advertising behavior. 

Google was fined the aforementioned amount by the European Commission in 2019 for abusing its dominance in online advertising through AdSense for Search (AFS) services agreements. According to the commission, services agreements between Google and AdSense customers contained clauses that forbade them from displaying ads with AFS competitors - an abuse of the Chrome lord's position, justifying the hefty fine. 

Google was quick to appeal the decision, and while the process may have taken a few years, it's now been resolved in Google's favor, with the fine being entirely vacated [PDF]. 

The commission failed to take into consideration all the relevant circumstances of the case

According to the GC, the commission failed to take into account the duration of service agreements between Google and AFS customers. Officials had only considered the total length of time that a customer had contracts with Google, and failed to recognize that AFS customers would have had time to renegotiate their deals with Google or seek other ad networks in the interim as well. 

"Many of the GSAs to which those publishers had been subject had, individually, a duration of only a few years, even if they had been renewed or extended thereafter, sometimes several times," the GC said.

Because those renegotiation periods existed, the GC said the three AFS agreement clauses at issue in the case (exclusivity, placement, and prior authorization clauses) didn't deter customers or stifle innovation, help Google maintain its dominance, nor harm netizens.

"The commission failed to take into consideration all the relevant circumstances of the case," the GC said, particularly "the duration of the contract clauses that the commission had deemed abusive." 

Google has been spanked multiple times by the European Commission, most recently losing a second appeal of a €2.42 billion fine levied against it in 2017 for abusing its search dominance. 

• Google dresses up services for the EU's Digital Markets Act
• EU companies claim Google still abusing its Shopping power
• EU kicks off an inquiry into Google's AI model
• Top EU court crushes Google appeal against $2.65B Shopping antitrust ruling

In addition to that case, Google was also fined an additional €4 billion for abusing its mobile search dominance in 2022, and the European Commission has reportedly considered breaking the internet titan up due to what's said to be continued legal transgressions. 

Google netted about $23.6 billion in the second quarter of 2024, so it shouldn't have too hard a time paying those remaining fines. Google hasn't responded to request for comment. 

Qualcomm fails to flee fine

Along with releasing its decision in the Google case, the General Court also released its decision in a case that saw the European Commission fine US chipmaker Qualcomm €242 million ($269 million) for its own anti-competitive behavior. Unlike Google, Qualcomm wasn't as lucky; its fine will stand, albeit slightly reduced. 

Qualcomm was fined by the EC in 2019 for selling 3G baseband modem chips at a loss to force a competitor out of business. That company, UK-based Icera, was later wound down by Nvidia after the GPU maker bought it out, and the EC's investigation followed shortly after its closure. 

But after reviewing the case, the GC said Qualcomm's appeal was unconvincing. 

"The court makes a detailed examination of all the pleas put forward by Qualcomm," the GC says [PDF] in a brief on its decision, "rejecting them all in their entirety." 

The one exception to the GC's rejection of Qualcomm's argument was its claim that the fine was too steep - that's a fair argument, the court said, noting that the commission "departed, without justification," from its own penalty guidelines. 

For its trouble, Qualcomm had its fine reduced from €242 million to €238.7 million; for reference, the chip shop had a net income of $2.1 billion last quarter.

"Qualcomm respectfully disagrees with the judgment and the commission's decision and believes that we have always remained in compliance with European competition law," a spokesperson for the Snapdragon designer told The Register in a statement. ®