Google’s legal battle to cancel a record of 4.125 billion euros ($ 4.7 billion) from the antitrust fine of the European Union underwent a significant setback Thursday after an influential advisor to the EU court urged the judges to reject the call of the technology giant.
Juliane Kokott, lawyer general of the European Court of Justice (CJCE), recommended that the court maintain a decision in 2022 by the EU general court, which had slightly reduced the initial fine but maintained the substance of the European Commission’s decision.
In his non -binding opinion, Kokott said the court should reject Google’s arguments and confirm the general court judgment according to which the American technology giant has indeed abused the dominant position of its Android mobile operating system.
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The fine, initially imposed in 2018 by the European Commission, remains the greatest ever perceived by the EU in an antitrust case. At the time, the Commission concluded that Google had used Android’s domination in the mobile space to illegally cement the market leadership of its search engine by forcing the manufacturers of smartphones to pre-install Google Search and Chrome as a condition for accessing the Play Store.
Commission’s verdict on the power of the Android market
The commission affair was focused on how Google structured its license agreements for Android, which, according to the regulator according to the Commission, the manufacturers who wanted to use the Google Play Store and other proprietary applications must agree to pre-install exclusively the own Google research and browser applications, effectively deleting competing software from the market.
Margrethe Vestager, the EU competition leader, had described Google’s practices as “illegal under the antitrust rules of the EU”, adding that society has denied consumers “the advantages of effective competition in the important mobile sphere”.
Google’s decline and its wider argument
Reacting to Thursday’s development, Google said it was “disappointed” from Kokott’s recommendation, which she said sends the bad signal to developers and users who rely on open source platforms.
“Android has created more choices for everyone and takes care of thousands of prosperous companies in Europe and worldwide,” Google spokesperson for CNBC told. The company also argued that the case of the EU, and the resulting fine, could discourage investment in open platforms.
Google maintains that Android, which it distributes for free, has improved competition by allowing smartphones manufacturers to personalize the devices and offer affordable handsets on mature and emerging markets. The company also said that it has made changes to its business practices following the original decision of 2018, in particular by offering users in Europe a choice of default search engines on Android devices.
What comes next?
Although Kokott’s opinion is not binding, it has a substantial weight in the final deliberations of the CJCE. Historically, the court follows the advocate general in around 80% of cases. A final decision of the CJCE is expected in the coming months.
If the court affirms the judgment, it would be the third major consecutive loss for Google in high -level EU antitrust affairs. He would also underline the authority of the European Commission to regulate major technologies and its ability to apply competition policy against dominant players in the digital markets.
Google was sentenced to a fine of more than 8 billion euros by the EU in three separate cases, including another to promote its own shopping service in research results and a third party involving online advertising.
The Android affair remains particularly important because of its large -scale implications for the mobile ecosystem and the future of grouped services in digital platforms.
A final defeat in the case could embrace EU regulators to pursue more aggressively other in progress investigations involving Apple, Amazon and Meta under the changing laws. It can also influence the way in which global regulators, including those of the United States and the United Kingdom, interpret the domination of platforms and anti-competitive grouping in mobile and digital ecosystems.
While the law on digital markets begins to take effect, Thursday’s opinion reaffirms the difficult position of Europe against the abuses perceived of the power of the platform and establishes a precedent which could affect the way in which open source trade models are regulated in all sectors.
