The Court of Justice of the European Union has rejected the appeal filed by Google and its parent company Alphabet against a ruling by the EU's General Court, upholding a €4.125 billion fine imposed on the tech giant for abusing its dominant position through the Android operating system.
The European Commission first found in 2018 that Google had abused its dominant position in the market by pre-installing Google Search and the Chrome browser as default applications, and through exclusivity agreements that restricted the choices available to users and device manufacturers.
The Commission initially imposed a fine of €4.34 billion, which was reduced to €4.125 billion in 2022 after the General Court partially annulled certain of the agreements in question.
The Court of Justice confirmed that Google's practices, including the pre-installation of its apps and its anti-fragmentation agreements, restricted competition and reinforced the company's dominant position. It also confirmed that no counterfactual analysis was required to establish the abuse, since the anti-competitive effects were already evident. The court found that the justifications put forward by Google, including service quality and user preference, were not sufficient to justify the practices.
Google must pay the fine within three months of the ruling's publication, a landmark decision for EU antitrust law.
Alphabet has not yet publicly commented on the ruling, but is expected to examine its legal options for any further appeal.
