By Foo Yun Chee
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Alphabet unit Google won a legal challenge on Wednesday against a European Union antitrust fine of 1.49 billion euros ($1.7 billion), while Qualcomm (NASDAQ:) failed to have a fine dropped.
The rulings underline the mixed record of outgoing EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager in defending her crackdown on Big Tech in court. She scored two major victories last week against Google in a separate case and against Apple’s (NASDAQ:) tax deal with Irish authorities.
The European Commission said in its 2019 decision that Google had abused its dominance to prevent websites from using brokers other than the AdSense platform that offered search ads. The practices they say were illegal took place from 2006 to 2016.
The Luxembourg-based General Court largely agreed with the European Union competition authority’s assessment of the case, but annulled the fine on the grounds that the Commission had failed to take into account all relevant circumstances.
Nor has the Commission shown that the clauses in question may have firstly deterred innovation, secondly helped Google maintain and strengthen its dominant position in the national online search advertising markets in question and, lastly, that they may have caused harm inflicted on consumers,” the judges said.
Google said the case involved a limited subset of text-only search ads placed on a limited number of publisher websites.
“We made changes to our contracts in 2016 to remove the relevant provisions, even before the Commission’s decision. We are pleased that the court recognized errors in the original decision and annulled the fine,” the company said in a statement. an email.
The Commission, which can appeal legal cases to the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU), said it would study the judgment and consider possible next steps.
The AdSense fine, one of three that cost Google a total of 8.25 billion euros, was caused by a complaint from Microsoft (NASDAQ:) in 2010.
The company last week lost its latest battle against a 2.42 billion euro fine imposed for using its price comparison service to gain an unfair advantage over smaller European rivals.
In the case of Qualcomm, the American chipmaker only managed to convince the General Court to reduce the EU antitrust fine from 242 million euros to 238.7 million euros.
Judges threw out all his arguments. The Commission imposed the fine in 2019, saying Qualcomm sold its chipsets below cost between 2009 and 2011, in a practice known as predatory pricing, to buy British phone software maker Icera, which is now part of Nvidia Corp . (NASDAQ:)
“Qualcomm respectfully disagrees with the Commission’s judgment and decision and believes that we have always remained compliant with European competition law,” the chipmaker said.
The Commission said it had also taken note of that ruling.
Qualcomm, which can appeal lawsuits to the CJEU, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The cases are T-334/19 Google and Alphabet (NASDAQ:) v Commission (Google AdSense for Search) and T-671/19 Qualcomm v Commission (Qualcomm – predatory pricing).
($1 = 0.8985 euros)
