Dominant position in search engines, confirmed the fine of over 4 billion for Google

The General Court of the European Union has largely confirmed the decision of the European Commission according to which Google would have “imposed illegal restrictions on Android device manufacturers and mobile network operators, in order to consolidate the dominant position of its search engine “.

It is read in a document published today, in which it is added that “in order to take into account in a better way the gravity and duration of the infringementthe Court considers it appropriate to impose a fine of 4.125 billion euros on Google at the end of a reasoning that differs, on some points, from that of the Commission ”.

In short, the judges have slightly reduced the fine that the EU Commission had inflicted on Google (about 4.34 billion euros), which remains the most important inflicted in Europe by a competition supervisory authority. In detail, the appeal lodged by Google “is essentially rejected by the Court, which limits itself to annul the decision only in the part in which it finds that the turnover sharing agreements for portfolio would constitute, in themselves, an abuse “. This is why the fine was reduced to € 4.125 billion.

Fine for Google also in South Korea

For the Mountain View company, the troubles are not over: according to the Yonhap news agency, South Korea has inflicted on Google (e pure a Meta) a penalty for alleged violations of the privacy law.

The Commission for the Protection of Personal Information would have sentenced Google to pay a fine of 69.2 billion won (just under 50 million dollars) and Meta to pay 30.8 billion won, or just over 22 million dollars. According to the indictment, “Google and Meta would not have clearly informed users of the collection and analysis services of their behavioral information to deduce their interests or use them for personalized advertising”.