On Tuesday, September 10th,$Alphabet-A (GOOGL.US)$lost the final legal battle against the European Union antitrust institution, the European Commission, ending a long-standing antitrust case.

The European Court of Justice on Tuesday supported a milestone antitrust ruling by the European Commission in 2017.

That year, after years of investigation, the European Commission ruled that Google abused its dominant position in the search engine field and gave higher rankings to its Google Shopping comparison service in listings, suppressing competition from rival shopping services. The Commission also imposed a massive fine of 2.42 billion euros (equivalent to 2.67 billion US dollars) on Google for this behavior.

After the European Commission's ruling, Google claimed to have made changes on its own to comply with the Commission's requirement to treat competitors equally, while also appealing the ruling to the European Court of Justice. However, the European General Court rejected Google's appeal in 2021 and upheld the 2.42 billion euro antitrust fine against Google.

However, the European Court of Justice's lower-level court, the EU General Court, rejected Google's appeal in 2021 and upheld the 2.42 billion euro antitrust fine against Google.

On Tuesday, the European Court of Justice upheld the lower-level court's ruling and rejected Google's appeal against the 2.4 billion euro fine imposed by the European Commission. According to a press release by the European Court of Justice, "The court dismisses the appeal and upholds the ruling of the General Court."

Regulatory efforts are increasing.

If we are to talk about the key figure in the Google antitrust case, it must be Margrethe Vestager, the Deputy Chairman of the European Commission and Commissioner for Competition. Since taking office as the European Commissioner for Competition in 2014, she has made Alphabet's Google her top target. The woman known as the "Antitrust Queen" of the European Union is about to end her second term in a few weeks.

Google's antitrust rulings in the European Union go beyond just the Google Shopping case. As the European Union intensifies its crackdown on the technology industry, the European Commission later pointed out that Google's parent company, Alphabet, illegally abused the Android mobile operating system and Adsense advertising business. It imposed fines of 4.125 billion euros and 1.49 billion euros for these two cases, respectively.

In other words, Google is facing fines totaling over 8 billion euros in three antitrust cases in the European Union.

Google later appealed the other two antitrust penalties mentioned above. It is reported that Google faced a setback in the Android case, as the General Court of the European Union upheld the European Commission's 4.125 billion euro fine in its 2022 ruling. As for Google's preliminary appeal against the 1.49 billion euro fine in the AdSense case, the Court has not yet made a ruling.

These three cases indicate that global regulatory institutions will intensify their efforts to crack down on the technology industry. The European Union is currently conducting more investigations into large tech companies and is drafting new laws to regulate social media platforms and artificial intelligence.

Meanwhile, Google is also facing special pressure in its digital advertising business. The U.S. Department of Justice has previously accused the company of having a monopoly position in the advertising technology industry. On Monday, September 9th, the U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust case against Google for illegal monopolization of the digital advertising industry entered the trial phase.

Editor/ping