Google asks EU's top court to uphold ruling to quash $1.7 billion fine
The company appealed to the European Union's top court on Wednesday to uphold a 2024 lower court ruling that quashed the European Commission's 1.49 billion euro (approximately $1.7 billion) antitrust fine against Google. In response, Google lawyer Josh Holmes refuted the European Commission's view at a hearing in Luxembourg, believing that its "new argument was flawed" and insisted that the lower court's "reasons for revoking the fine were clear and complete." He stressed that the European Commission ignored evidence that showed that Google's competitors had substantial opportunities to compete in the market. Antony Dawes, a lawyer for the European Commission, accused the lower court of making an error in its judgment and believed that its regulatory agency had assumed an unprecedented obligation to analyze key issues that had already been resolved by case law, which amounted to "subverting case law." Google is currently involved in multiple lawsuits with the European Union. Just this week, the European Court of Justice rejected Google’s appeal against another 4.1 billion euros antitrust fine related to Google’s monopolistic behavior in the Android system. In the AdSense case, the general counsel will issue a non-binding opinion on November 12, with a final ruling expected in the months after that.