A top European Union court on Wednesday
rejected Google’s appeal of a 2.4 billion euro
($2.8 billion) fine from regulators who found the
tech giant abused its massive online reach by
giving its own shopping recommendations an
illegal advantage in search results.
The European Commission, the 27-nation bloc’s
top competition watchdog, punished Google
in 2017 for unfairly directing visitors to its own
shopping service, Google Shopping, to the
detriment of competitors. The EU’s General
Court dismissed Google’s appeal of that antitrust
penalty and upheld the fine.
“The General Court thus rules that, in reality,
Google favors its own comparison shopping
service over competing services, rather than