On Tuesday, September 10th,$Alphabet-A (GOOGL.US)$lost the final legal battle against the European Union antitrust institution, the European Commission, ending a long-standing antitrust case.

The EU court on Tuesday supported a landmark antitrust ruling by the European Commission in 2017.

In that year, after years of investigation, the European Commission ruled that Google had abused its dominant position in the search engine field, giving higher rankings to its Google Shopping service in the listings, thereby suppressing the shopping services of its competitors. The Commission also imposed a huge fine of 2.42 billion euros (equivalent to 2.67 billion US dollars) on Google for this action.

Following the EU Commission's ruling, Google claimed to have made changes to comply with the Commission's decision to treat competitors equally. Meanwhile, the company appealed the decision to the EU court.

However, the EU General Court rejected Google's appeal in 2021, upholding the 2.42 billion euro antitrust fine against Google.

On Tuesday, the EU court upheld the ruling of the lower court, rejecting Google's appeal against the 2.4 billion euro fine imposed by the European Commission. The EU court stated in a press release, "The court rejected the appeal and upheld the General Court's judgment."

Increased regulatory enforcement

If we talk about the key figure in the Google antitrust case, it must be Margrethe Vestager, the Executive Vice President of the European Commission and Commissioner for Competition. Since taking office as the EU Competition Commissioner in 2014, she has made Alphabet's Google her top target. This person, known as the "Antitrust Queen" of the EU, is about to end her second term in a few weeks.

The anti-monopoly ruling that Google faces in the EU is not only limited to the case of Google Shopping. As the EU intensifies its crackdown on the technology industry, the European Commission also pointed out later that Alphabet, the parent company of Google, has illegally abused the Android mobile operating system and Adsense advertising business, and imposed fines of 4.125 billion euros and 1.49 billion euros on these two cases respectively.

In other words, the total fines for the three antitrust cases that Google faces in the EU exceed 8 billion euros.

Google has also appealed the other two antitrust penalties mentioned above. It is reported that Google has encountered setbacks in the Android case, and the General Court of the EU upheld the European Commission's 4.125 billion euro fine in its ruling in 2022. As for Google's preliminary appeal against the 1.49 billion euro fine in the AdSense case, the court has not yet made a ruling.

These three cases indicate that global regulatory agencies will intensify their efforts to crack down on the technology industry. The EU is currently conducting more investigations into large tech companies and drafting new laws to clean up social media platforms and regulate artificial intelligence.

At the same time, Google is also facing special pressure in its digital advertising business. The U.S. Department of Justice previously accused the company of having a monopoly position in the advertising technology industry. On Monday, September 9th, the U.S. Department of Justice's case against Google for illegal monopoly in the digital advertising industry entered the trial phase.

Editor/ping