EU Court Rejects Google’s Appeal of $2.8 Billion Fine

The European Union’s General Court has rejected Google’s appeal of a $2.8 billion European Commission fine for giving its own shopping suggestions an illegal advantage in search results.

The commission fined the American technology giant in 2017 for wrongfully directing visitors to its Google Shopping service at the expense of smaller European competitors.

The General Court ruled that it “largely dismisses” Google’s appeal and is upholding the fine after “finding that Google abused its dominant position by favoring its own comparison-shopping service over competing” services.

Google, which is also appealing two other EU antitrust penalties totaling $9.5 billion, said in a statement it amended its practices in 2017 to comply with the European Commission’s decision.

“Our approach has worked successfully for more than three years, generating billions of clicks for more than 700 comparison shopping services,” the statement said.

Earlier this year, the commission launched antitrust probes into whether Google and Facebook are suppressing competition in the classified and digital advertising sectors. The commission is also investigating Apple over payments and Amazon, another U.S. tech giant, over concerns it is unfairly competing with independent retailers on its platform with its own products.

Google said it has not decided whether to appeal Wednesday’s ruling in the European Court of Justice, the EU’s highest court.

Some information in this report also came from The Associated Press and Reuters.

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