EU Judge Raises Prospect of Increasing Multibillion Fine Against Google
February 14 2020 - 12:08PM
Dow Jones News
By Valentina Pop
LUXEMBOURG -- Alphabet Inc.'s appeal against a
multibillion-dollar fine for alleged anticompetitive behavior by
its Google unit risks backfiring after a European Union court
floated the prospect of increasing the fine, rather than scrapping
it.
In a surprise twist Friday at the end of a three-day hearing,
one of five judges on the panel said the EU's General Court has the
power to increase the EUR2.4 billion ($2.6 billion) fine, levied in
2017, if it finds that the sum was insufficient to deter the
company from further anticompetitive behavior.
"The fine of EUR2.4 billion was described as eye-catching, but
it is a small amount of cash in your hands," Judge Colm Mac
Eochaidh said in court. "Did that level of fine deter you from
repeating your behavior?" he asked Google's counsel.
Mr. Mac Eochaidh said that as recently as this year, travel
search engines including Expedia and TripAdvisor had complained to
the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, about Google's
alleged anticompetitive behavior.
Christopher Thomas, a counsel for Google, dismissed the idea
that the fine was warranted and said the company takes the entire
antitrust process "with extreme seriousness." Google disputes the
findings of the commission that it had willingly or negligently
squeezed competitors out of its shopping searches.
Increasing a fine has only one precedent in the court's history,
according to Mr. Mac Eochaidh, when German chemicals giant BASF SE
was ordered to pay EUR54,000 in 2007 on top of an initial EUR35
million fine for participating in a chemicals cartel.
The prospect of raising the fine was described as theoretical by
the panel's presiding judge. Still, it sent Google lawyers
scrambling for arguments, with one sitting on the floor outside the
courtroom frantically researching how to contest such a move. If
Google loses the case, it has the right to appeal to the bloc's
highest court, the European Court of Justice.
At the core of the dispute is a finding from 2017 by European
Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager that Google had abused
the dominance of its search engine to drive traffic to its own
shopping ads at the expense of rivals that operated their own
shopping-comparison sites.
The EUR2.4 billion sum was a record fine at the time, and it was
followed by two other rulings against Google with fines totaling
more than $9 billion. Google is challenging the other fines as
well. The ruling in this first case, due next year, will have a
significant impact on its other appeals as well as on other
antitrust cases against tech companies.
The "judgment will guide future cases, not just for the European
Commission, but also for member states and courts outside the EU,"
said James Killick, a lawyer representing the Washington-based
Computer & Communications Industry Association, a tech-industry
group.
Write to Valentina Pop at valentina.pop@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 14, 2020 11:53 ET (16:53 GMT)
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