Google urges EU court to scrap $1.6 billion antitrust fine

• Google said decision was riddled with errors and should be struck down

• EU says Google has ‘ultra-dominant position’ in search

Alphabet Inc’s (NASDAQ: GOOGL) Google urged European Union to dismiss a 1.49-billion-euro ($1.6 billion) fine imposed by EU antitrust regulators, saying the rulingwas riddled with errors.

In its 2019 decision, the European Commission said the search giant had abused its dominant position in the market to thwart websites using brokers other than Google’s AdSense platform, which provides online search advertisements.

The Commission said the illegal practices occurred from 2006 to 2016.

The world’s most popular internet search engine challenged the decision in the Luxembourg-based General Court, the second-highest court of the EU, and will set out its case during a three-day hearing starting on Monday.

In a court document, Google said the EU competition agency’s assessment of market dominance and the Commission’s decision that search ads and non-search ads do not compete was wrong.

It is one of three cases that has resulted in 8.25 billion euros in EU antitrust fines on Google.

The company, in November, lost the first challenge in its pending appeals in a 2.42-billion-euro antitrust decision over the use of its own price comparison shopping service to gain an unfair advantage over smaller European rivals.

The General Court, on September 14, is set to rule on Google’s appeal of a 4.3 billion-euro antitrust fine over its Android operating system.

Picture Credit: Reuters

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