EU General Court to begin three-day hearing in Google antitrust case today

Google is expected to argue in the court that EU decision "is wrong on the law, the facts, and the economics

Google's lawyers have the next three days to try to convince EU judges to overturn a €2.4 billion antitrust fine imposed by the European Commission in 2017.

The EU's General Court in Luxembourg is set to begin a three-day hearing in the landmark case today, which experts believe could decide how European regulators tackle tech giants over allegations of abuse of market dominance.

In 2017, the EU's competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager slapped a €2.4 billion ($2.6 billion) fine on search giant over unfairly thwarting smaller shopping search rivals. Following a detailed probe, Vestager concluded that Google had abused its dominance in online search by favouring results that linked to its Google Shopping site.

Google, which disagreed with the regulator's findings, challenged the decision in the EU's General Court in Luxembourg.

It argued that small comparison shopping services provided poor quality and didn't rank high in search results.

Five judges in EU's General Court will now hear the arguments from both sides over the next three days, and will decide whether they agree with the analysis of EU's antitrust regulator.

According to Bloomberg, Google will argue in the court that EU decision "is wrong on the law, the facts, and the economics".

It will show that the company has improved quality, while also increasing the number of choice for buyers with shopping ads that help to find products that customers want and also link sellers to potential customers.

The EU, on the other hand, will argue that Google's actions prevent smaller rivals from appearing in Google's search, which is needed for commercial success.

A final decision in the case is expected to come next year.

Since 2017, the EU antitrust regulator has hit the search giant with three other antitrust penalties amounting to about $10 billion.

In 2018, Google was slapped a fine of €4.34bn ($5bn) over it faulty licensing terms for Android operating system. At that time, the regulator concluded that Google was treating smartphone makers unfairly.

Last year, the EU's antitrust office imposed a fine of about $1.6 billion on the company for mistreating publishers who use Google's AdSense tool to monetise their websites.

The investigation into alleged anti-competitive behaviour by AdSense started in July 2016, and the European Commission concluded in 2019 that Google had abused its market dominance for ten years by preventing rivals from competing in the online search advertising intermediation market.

"The Commission found that Google's conduct harmed competition and consumers, and stifled innovation," the Commission said.

"Google's rivals were unable to grow and offer alternative online search advertising intermediation services to those of Google.

"As a result, owners of websites had limited options for monetizing space on these websites and were forced to rely almost solely on Google."

Notably, Google's annual report in March 2019 indicated that in 2018, the company paid more money in EU fines than it does in taxes.