Google won an appeal against the fine of the European Commission

Google Corporation won an appeal against a fine by the European Commission for violating competition rules. The fine in the amount of 1.5 billion euros was canceled on Wednesday by the Supreme Court of the EU, the Financial Times reports.

The court said it accepted most of the commission’s assessment that the company had used its dominant position to block competing online advertisers, but ruled to cancel the €1.5 billion fine imposed on Google in the case. The court connected this decision with the fact that the European Commission “did not take into account all the relevant circumstances when assessing the term of validity of the contractual provisions, which it considered unfair.”

The case against Google was initiated in 2019 by Margrethe Vestager, the head of the EU Antimonopoly Committee. She accused the corporation of the fact that from 2006 to 2016, the company introduced anti-competitive restrictions that prevented the cooperation of third-party sites with other advertising services. The penalty was based on the seriousness and duration of the violation.

Google representatives noted that changes to contracts with websites were made back in 2016, before the decision of the European Commission and the initiation of the case. The company expressed satisfaction with the court’s ruling, noting that the court “recognized mistakes.”