Collision Course with the EU: Google and the Eternal Anti-Monopoly Struggle

The technology giant Google, part of the Alphabet group, faces another unpleasant setback in its ongoing legal battle against a multi-billion-euro EU antitrust fine. The chief advisor of the highest EU court has supported a fine of 4.12 billion euros imposed by the EU's antitrust authorities due to contractual requirements for the use of its Android operating system. Juliane Kokott, Advocate General at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, stated that Google's challenge against this fine is unlawful. She believes Google has exploited its dominant market position over the years to favor its services, such as Google Search. Kokott therefore recommended that the judges uphold the fine. Google expressed disappointment with this opinion and warned that upholding the fine could hinder investments in open platforms, ultimately harming users, developers, and business partners. This opinion is another setback for the search engine giant, which has been battling multibillion-euro fines from the Commission for competition violations for years. Although the judges are not obliged to follow the Advocate General's opinion, they usually do. In 2018, the European Commission hit Google with a record fine of 4.34 billion euros, as the company exploited its dominant market position to force device manufacturers and network operators to prioritize traffic to the Google search engine on Android devices. Google appealed, and the fine was reduced to 4.12 billion euros in a previous proceeding. Even though Google attempted to further reduce the remaining fine, Kokott saw no disproportionality in the calculation of the fine by the judges. As a result, Google made adjustments to give users more control over the default search engines and browsers on their devices. Since 2019, the company has been offering competitors a choice screen. Furthermore, the technology giant is now subject to strict new regulations under the EU's Digital Markets Act, which governs how large technology groups must treat smaller companies relying on their well-known platforms like search and Chrome. Violations can result in fines of up to 10% of annual worldwide revenue, with penalties increasing to 20% for repeat offenses. Overall, Google has accumulated around 8.25 billion euros in competition fines over the past ten years. Last year, it failed to overturn a fine of 2.4 billion euros related to the positioning of its shopping search results over other price comparison sites.