The news: The EU General Court ruled against Google in the company’s appeal to overturn a $2.8 billion antitrust fine. The fee was issued by the EU’s competition regulator in 2017 over its comparison shopping ads, per Insider.
How we got here: The European Commission found Google abused its dominant position to place its own shopping services above competitors in its search results. "While relegating the results from competing comparison services in those pages by means of ranking algorithms, Google departed from competition on the merits," the court said.
More on this: The EU's General Court confirmed in a statement Wednesday that Google had favored "its own comparison shopping service on its general results pages through more favorable display and positioning."
The bigger picture: Google’s loss in the EU could fuel momentum from regulators in other regions to push for stricter antitrust regulation, specifically on Google’s dominance on search, shopping, and Android. Google could be facing waves of litigation.
Some good news for Google: The UK Supreme Court blocked a $4.3B class-action lawsuit claiming Google unlawfully tracked personal information of millions of iPhone users. Google said the claim was related to events from a decade ago, which it had already addressed.
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