Alphabet unit Google suffered a setback on Wednesday (November 10) after Europe’s second-highest court dismissed its challenge to an EU antitrust ruling and 2.42 billion euro ($2.8 billion) fine in a major win for EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager.
Vestager sanctioned the world’s most popular internet search engine in 2017 for favouring its own price-comparison shopping service to give it an unfair advantage against smaller European rivals.
The shopping case was the first of a trio of decisions that have seen Google rack up a total of 8.25 billion euros in EU antitrust fines in the last decade. Vestager subsequently took on Amazon, Apple and Facebook, where investigations are still ongoing.
Separately, the UK Supreme Court has blocked a planned 3.2 billion pound ($4.3 billion) British class action against Google over allegations that the internet giant unlawfully tracked the personal information of millions of iPhone users.
Britain’s top judges unanimously granted a Google appeal against the country’s first such data privacy case, a move that upsets a string of similar claims waiting in the wings against other companies including Facebook and TikTok.
