The European Court of Justice (ECJ) annulled on Wednesday the European Commission’s (EC) 2019 fine of nearly €1.5bn imposed on US company Google for allegedly violating European rules.
The fine, imposed five years ago, was found to be flawed in assessing the duration of the clauses because the commission reportedly failed to establish that the three clauses constituted an abuse of Google’s dominant position, the ECJ said in a statement.
Google AdSense, the search engine’s advertising platform, serves as an intermediary for publishers to place their adverts on websites and earn revenue from them.
The Google Service Agreement (GSA) contains clauses governing the advertising service. Three of these clauses were cited by the Commission to fine the search engine for impeding competitiveness.
According to the European Court of Justice, these three clauses – on exclusivity, placement and prior authorisation – are the reasons for AdSense’s dominant position cited by the European Commission.
