Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O) Google launched a last-ditch attempt at Europe’s top court on Tuesday to reverse a 2.42 billion euro ($2.6 billion) EU antitrust penalties for market abuse relating to its shopping service, arguing regulators failed to prove its activities were anti-competitive.
Google appealed to the CJEU after the General Court rejected its challenge to EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager’s 2017 penalties in 2021.
The first of three anti-competitive penalties cost Google 8.25 billion euros in the past decade.
According to Google lawyer Thomas Graf, the European Commission failed to prove that the company’s differing treatment of rivals was abusive and not anti-competitive.
Companies don’t compete by treating rivals similarly. They treat them differently to compete. The purpose of competition is to distinguish a company from competitors. He instructed the 15 judges not to side with rivals to be identical.
It would hurt competitiveness to label every treatment, especially of first- and third-party businesses, abusive. “It would hinder company competition and innovation,” Graf added.
Google’s arguments were rejected by Commission lawyer Fernando Castillo de la Torre, who claimed the corporation had violated EU antitrust regulations by favoring its price comparison shopping service with its algorithms.
“Google was entitled to apply algorithms that lower the visibility of less relevant results for a user query,” he stated.
“Google was not entitled to use its dominance in general search to extend its position over comparison shopping by promoting its own services, embellishing them with attractive features, and applying algorithms that push down rivals’ results and showing them without attractive features,” he said.
Juliane Kokott, CJEU advocate general, slated her non-binding opinion for Jan. 11. In the next months, the CJEU will rule on her recommendation.
This case and two others concerning Android and AdSense pale compared to the EU antitrust case against Google’s rich digital advertising business, which regulators threatened to break up in June.
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