GOOGLE DEFINITIVELY FINED
In a ruling delivered yesterday, the highest court of the European Union’s justice (CJEU) system rejected Google’s appeal against the 4.1 billion euro fine for abusing its dominant position in the online search sector.
This fine was initially announced in 2018 and set at 4.3 billion euros.
The European Commission accused Google of favoring its search engine services by making them the default on its widely dominant Android mobile operating system. From the start, Google tried to challenge the fine, getting the amount reassessed to 4.1 billion euros by the European Union court in 2022. But even though the court revised the amount, it still approved the principle of the fine imposed by the Commission.
The company also filed an appeal against this new decision before the Court of Justice of the European Union. It disputed several legal points in the court’s ruling, but the CJEU did not follow Google’s arguments and instead sided with the conclusions of the Advocate General, who recommended last year to uphold the Tribunal’s ruling.
Google expressed regret that the judgment does not “take into account the considerable investments made to ensure that Android remains open, interoperable, and free.”
AND META COULD FOLLOW SUITE
The French Competition Authority sides with news publishers in their showdown with Meta. Asked last year by the Alliance of General Information Press (Apig) and the Neighboring Press Rights organization (DVP), the authority said that META was causing ‘serious harm’ to the press and ‘increasing its precariousness’ by not renewing, since January 1, 2025, the neighboring rights agreements with French daily and magazine press. With talks reaching dead ends, the Authority believes these practices could constitute an abuse of dominant position, a point that the in-depth investigation will settle, and which could lead to financial penalties in the coming months.
This litigation comes at a time when more and more responsibles express concern about the ruthless looting of media works by most of AI providers
