Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
The EU’s second-most senior court, the General Court, has upheld a 2017 ruling by the European Commission which found that Google broke antitrust law in how it used its search engine to promote its shopping comparison service and demote its rivals.
Google and its parent company Alphabet appealed the decision, but the General Court said today it had dismissed that appeal and upheld a fine of €2.4 billion ($2.8 billion).
This outcome is significant as it strengthens antitrust arguments being made by the EU’s influential competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager against US tech firms. In addition to this shopping comparison case, Google has been hit by two other major antitrust cases involving Android and AdSense in 2018 and 2019…
