European justice dealt a severe setback to the American internet giant Google by upholding on Wednesday a record fine imposed in 2018 by Brussels for abuse of a dominant position in its Android operating system.
“The appeal filed by Google is essentially dismissed,” announced the General Court, based in Luxembourg. However, he considered it “appropriate” to reduce the amount of the sanction from 4,300 to 4,100 million euros “to better take into account the seriousness and duration of the infraction,” he explained in a statement.
Even reduced, this fine remains the highest ever imposed by the European Commission, which oversees the proper functioning of competition rules within the single market.
This decision is a sentence issued in the first instance and can be appealed within two months.
The group did not immediately specify whether it was considering appealing to the EU Court of Justice, Europe’s highest court.
For its part, the Commission said “to take note of the sentence,” noting that it had “largely confirmed (his) fine.”
Brussels accuses Google of having forced the manufacturers of phones and tablets that use its operating system to pre-install its search engine and Chrome browser to eliminate competitors. It would have abused the attack force of its Android system used in 80% of the world’s mobile devices.
The EU court confirmed that Google had indeed “imposed illegal restrictions (…) to consolidate the dominant position of its search engine”.
The Mountain View, California, group, however, believes the EU has wrongly ignored competitor Apple, which favors its own services on its iPhones, such as the Safari browser. “The Commission has turned a blind eye to the true competitive dynamics of this sector, the one that opposes Apple and Android,” explained the group’s lawyer, during a hearing last year.
Google had also argued that downloading competitor apps was one-click away and that customers were in no way obligated to use its products on Android.
“Victory for the Commission”
Wednesday’s ruling is “a victory for the Commission (…). Google can no longer impose its will on phone manufacturers,” said Thomas Vinje, a lawyer for FairSearch, an organization that brings together competitors who had started the case. for a complaint in 2013. .
This file is one of the three major disputes opened by Brussels against Google, whose practices are also disputed in the United States and Asia.
In 2017, the Commission fined the tech giant €2.4 billion for anti-competitive practices in the price comparison market. This fine was confirmed in January by the EU court. Google then announced that it was attractive.
In 2019, the European executive had still claimed €1.5 billion from Google for competition infringements attributed to its AdSense advertising management.
On the other hand, the European justice had annulled in June a fine of almost one billion euros against the manufacturer of mobile telephone equipment Qualcomm, after having already annulled in January a sanction of 1,060 million euros against the chip manufacturer Intel Electronics .
Frustrated by endless litigation against digital giants, the EU has devised new legislation to curb abuses of dominance by Silicon Valley giants.
The Digital Markets Law (DMA), which will come into force next year, will impose a series of upstream obligations and prohibitions on groups such as Google, Apple, Meta (Facebook) and Amazon. Your goal is to act before the abusive behavior has destroyed the competition.
Source: BFM TV
