EU court upholds Google’s challenge to €1.49bn EU antitrust fine By Reuters

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Europe’s second highest court on Wednesday upheld Google unit Alphabet’s (NASDAQ: ) challenge against a 1.49 billion euro ($1.66 billion) antitrust fine imposed five years ago for preventing rivals in online search advertising.

“The court (…) upheld most of the commission’s assessments, but overturned the decision to impose a fine of almost 1.5 billion euros on Google, in particular because it did not take into account all the relevant circumstances in its assessment. of the duration of the contractual clauses that it considered to be unfair,” said the Luxembourg Court.

In 2019, the European Commission fined the world’s most popular internet search engine, one of three fines that cost Google a total of €8.25 billion.

The case is T-334/19 Google and Alphabet v Commission (Google AdSense for search).

(1 USD = 0.8990 euros)