The European Court of Justice has upheld the EU Commission’s competition fine of 4.1 billion euros against Google. The judges concluded in Luxembourg on Thursday that the company had imposed illegal restrictions on manufacturers of Android smartphones and mobile service providers to strengthen its search engine market dominance. Google and its parent company, Alphabet, had appealed the original EU Court ruling, but those appeals have now been dismissed.
In 2018, the European Commission had found that Google was abusing its dominant position. This was determined largely through pre-installation agreements and licensing terms which ensured that Google Search and the Chrome browser were used on mobile devices running the Android operating system. While the Court of Justice confirmed the status of this infringement as a uniform and ongoing violation, it did declare part of the Commission’s initial decision void, specifically concerning agreements related to income splitting.
The Court determined that the original EU Court had not made any legal errors when assessing the anti-competitive impact of the pre-installation requirements. It ruled that conducting a counterfactual analysis was not necessary to establish a violation of the prohibition on abusing a dominant position. Furthermore, the Court verified the judgment on the anti-fragmentation agreements, confirming that these arrangements were effective in restricting distribution opportunities for incompatible Android versions.
