Luxemburg City (TDI): Qualcomm was unable to dismiss a charge, but Google prevailed in a legal fight on Wednesday against an antitrust fine of €1.49 billion ($1.66 billion) assessed by the European Union.
The decisions highlight Margrethe Vestager’s inconsistent stance in support of her legal crackdown on Big Tech, as the departing head of EU antitrust enforcement.
She prevailed against Apple’s tax agreement with Irish authorities as well as Google in a different instance last week.
Google, an Alphabet company, was found to have abused its market dominance in 2019 when the European Commission ruled that websites could only use its AdSense platform to display search advertising.
From 2006 till 2016, the actions that were deemed unlawful occurred.
The European Court of Justice’s General Court for the EU mostly concurred with the EU competition enforcer’s analysis of the case.
However, it revoked the punishment on the grounds that the Commission had neglected to consider all pertinent facts.
Additionally, the judges found that the Commission had failed to show that the contested clauses had, among other things, possibly hurt consumers, helped Google maintain and bolster its dominant position in the relevant national online search advertising markets, and first, possibly discouraged innovation.
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Google stated that a small portion of text-only search advertisements hosted on a restricted number of publishers’ websites were at issue in this scenario.
The Commission stated that it will review the ruling and consider its options for the future. The Commission is able to appeal decisions on legal matters to the European Court of Justice.
Microsoft’s 2010 lawsuit led to the imposition of the AdSense sanction, one of three penalties that have cost Google a total of €8.25 billion ($9.18 billion).
The US chipmaker Qualcomm was only able to persuade the General Court to reduce its EU antitrust sentence from €242 million to €238.7 million in its case.
Judges rejected each of its arguments.
The Commission levied the fine in 2019 after claiming that Qualcomm engaged in “predatory pricing” by selling its chipsets below cost between 2009 and 2011 in an effort to undermine British phone software manufacturer Icera, which is now a part of Nvidia.
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According to the Commission, it had also noted that decision.
A request for comment from Qualcomm was not immediately answered. Qualcomm has the right to appeal decisions on legal issues to the European Court of Justice.
