European Court of Justice upholds $2.7B fine against Google

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has upheld a 2.4 billion euros ($2.65 billion) fine imposed by the European Commission on technology giant Google for violating rules related to its comparison shopping service.

Based in Luxembourg, the ECJ, which is the highest legal authority in the EU, announced its decision regarding the appeal filed by Google and its parent company Alphabet against the fine.

The court rejected Google’s and Alphabet’s appeal, confirming that the fine was appropriate due to Google’s abuse of its dominant market position by giving preferential treatment to its own comparison shopping service.

The ECJ ruled that Google’s practice of favoring its own shopping search results over those of competitors constituted discrimination.

The European Commission had initiated an investigation into Google for providing an unfair advantage to its shopping services via its search engine.

In 2017, the commission fined Google 2.4 billion euros for misusing its dominance as a search engine and required the company to treat rival services equally.

Google challenged the fine, arguing that it was legally, qualitatively and economically incorrect.

The General Court of the EU had previously upheld the fine, leading Google to escalate the matter to the European Court of Justice.