In an opinion delivered on Thursday 11 January, in Case C-48/22 P, Advocate General Juliane Kokott proposes that the Court dismiss in its entirety the appeal brought by Google LLC (USA) and its holding company Alphabet, Inc. against the European Commission and to confirm the fine imposed by the Commission.
The two companies were challenging a decision by the European Commission, which had found that Google was abusing its dominant position on the market for general Internet search services and on the market for specialised product search services.
On 27 June 2017, the Commission found that Google had favoured the results of its own Google Shopping product comparator by placing them at the top of the results displayed on its general search results page and by presenting them in a more attractive way than the results of competing product comparators (see EUROPE 11295/1).
The Commission therefore imposed a fine of €2,424,495,000 on Google. Alphabet, as Google’s sole shareholder, was required to make a payment of €523,518,000.
Google and Alphabet challenged the Commission’s decision before the General Court of the European Union.
On 10 November 2021, the General Court dismissed the appeal and upheld the fine. On the other hand, the General Court found that it had not been established that Google’s conduct had had anti-competitive effects on the general search market. The General Court therefore annulled the Commission’s decision concerning an infringement of the ban on abuse of a dominant position on the general search market.
In her opinion of 11 January, Ms Kokott took the view that Google’s so-called self-favouritism practice did indeed constitute an autonomous form of abuse “resulting from the application of unreasonable conditions of access to competing product comparators”, especially as the “at least potential” anti-competitive effects had been found by the Commission in the form of a foreclosure effect on competitors on the specialised search services market.
In the Advocate General’s view, the Commission and the General Court rightly found that Google had engaged in “leveraging” abuse, using its dominant position on the market for general search services as leverage in order to gain competitive advantages, drive competitors out of the market and strengthen its position on the market for specialised product search services.
In particular, the Advocate General considered that the General Court had not erred in law by rejecting the existence of an obligation on the Commission to apply the “as-efficient competitor” test.
Link to the Opinion: https://aeur.eu/f/acs (Original version in French by Émilie Vanderhulst)