An adviser to the European Union’s top court recommended a renewed examination of Google’s €1.49 billion AdSense fine, while arguing that any penalty after a remand should be lower.
On Nov. 12, Advocate General Juliane Kokott urged the Court of Justice of the European Union to set aside a 2024 General Court ruling that annulled the European Commission’s decision imposing the fine, then return the dispute to the lower court. Her view does not bind the judges. Kokott said the General Court took too narrow an approach to contract duration and could assess major publisher agreements collectively, weighing their length alongside their terms and operation. The lower court also has yet to address several of Google’s arguments, including its challenge to the fine’s amount.
The European Commission set the penalty at €1,494,459,000 in March 2019, with Alphabet jointly and severally liable for part of it. The Commission said publisher agreements in force from 2006 through 2016 restricted rival search advertising through exclusivity clauses, limits on ad placement and a requirement for Google’s prior approval before publishers changed ad displays.
AdSense for Search lets websites with search functions display Google ads and receive a portion of the revenue. The Commission argued that publishers offered rival ad brokers an important way to reach customers because those brokers could not place ads on Google’s search pages. It also put Google above 70% of the European Economic Area market for matching search ads with publisher sites from 2006 to 2016. The Commission said the contract rules narrowed publishers’ ways to earn revenue and limited rivals’ access. Those were the Commission’s findings in the case.
In September 2024, the General Court overturned the Commission’s decision after finding gaps in its treatment of contract length and the market conditions in 2016. Most of the Commission’s other conclusions remained intact.
Kokott’s proposed reduction rests on another part of that ruling: she said the Commission did not appeal the finding that exclusionary effects had not been sufficiently demonstrated for 2016. She argued that any fine should therefore be lower, even as Google’s other challenges remain for the General Court to consider.
The Court of Justice said its judges were beginning deliberations and would issue a ruling later. The court gave no date.
