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November 10, 2021 The Court of First Instance of the European Court of Justice rejected Google's appeal against the decision of the EU Commission to

for abusing its dominant position, having favored the its own comparative shopping service compared to similar competing services.

The court then upheld the

imposed by the Commission on Google for giving an illegal advantage to its shopping comparison service, 'Google Shopping'.

"Today's decision by the EU Court delivers a clear message: Google's conduct was illegal. It also provides the necessary legal clarity for the market," said a spokeswoman for the European Commission commenting on the decision. 

"Ads on Shopping help people find the products they're looking for quickly and easily, and help merchants reach potential customers. Today's review, which we'll look at in detail, relates to a number of facts. very specific and already in 2017 we made changes to comply with the decision of the European Commission ".

This is what a spokesperson for Google says, commenting on the decision of the EU Court that rejected Google's appeal against the decision of the European Commission, according to which the Mountain View giant has abused its dominant position by favoring its purchasing service. comparative, compared to competing services.

"Our approach - continued the spokesperson - has worked successfully for more than three years, generating billions of clicks for more than 700 comparison shopping services."

In June 2017, the Commission found that, in thirteen European Economic Area countries, Google had abused its dominant position in the general internet search market by promoting its product comparator, a specialized search service, over product comparators. competitors. The latter appeared as simple generic results (presented in the form of a blue link) and, unlike the results of the Google product comparator, were likely to be demoted by the adjustment algorithms on the general results pages of Google.

For this violation, the Commission had imposed a fine on Google of 2,424,495,000 euros, of which 523,518,000 euros jointly with Alphabet (parent company). Google and Alphabet have appealed the Commission's decision to the General Court of the European Union.

The Court recognized the anti-competitive nature of the contested practice, considering that, by promoting its product comparator on the general results pages through a presentation and a privileged positioning and by relegating the results of competing comparators, through Through ranking algorithms, Google has moved away from 'competition for merit'. In fact, the importance of the traffic generated by the general search engine Google for product comparators, the behavior of users who generally focus on the first results as well as the high proportion and irreplaceable nature of the 'hijacked' traffic in the traffic of product comparators. , the contested practice 'risked entailing a weakening of competition on the market'.

The court also found that, given the universal vocation of Google's general search engine, which aims to index results including all possible content, the promotion on Google's results pages of a single type of specialized result, namely its

own. , 'takes on some form of anomaly'. In fact, a general search engine is an infrastructure, in principle, open, whose purpose and value lies in its ability to open itself to results coming from outside, i.e. from third-party sources and to visualize these sources that enrich it. and give it credibility.

The Court then found that the case concerned the conditions for the provision by Google of its general search service through access to general results pages by comparators of competing products. In this regard, he indicates that the general results page

has characteristics that bring it closer to an essential structure as 'currently no actual or potential substitute is available on the market to replace it in an economically sustainable way'.

However, the Court confirms that any practice relating to access to such a facility does not necessarily imply being assessed in the light of the conditions applicable to the refusal to supply set out in the Bronner judgment, relied on by Google in support of its argument.

In this context, the Court considers that 'the contested practice is not based on a refusal to supply, but on an unequal treatment carried out by Google for the exclusive benefit of its comparator, for which the aforementioned judgment does not apply in this case'.