The amount of fines Google has to pay in Europe may have decreased slightly. It has successfully convinced the EU’s General Court to cancel a €1.5 billion ($1.7 billion) fine imposed against it in 2019 for what the European Commission described as “abusive behaviour in online advertising.”
According to the Financial Times, the General Court agreed with the commission’s assessment that Google had blocked rival advertisers from its platform. However, it argued that the commission had failed to take into account “all relevant circumstances” when it assessed how long the company had applied anti-competitive behaviours.
The commission, led by competition chief Margrethe Vestager, found in 2019 that Google had banned publishers from placing competitors’ search ads on its search results pages from 2006 to 2009. It slightly changed its rules in 2009, but it did not remove the clause related to the ban in its contracts until 2016.
The fine for this particular case was higher than expected, as the Commission said it took into account the “duration and severity of the violations.” “This case is about a very narrow subset of text-only search ads placed on the websites of a limited number of publishers,” Google said in a statement to the Financial Times.
“We had already made changes to our contracts in 2016 to remove the relevant provisions before the Commission’s decision. We are pleased that the court has recognized the errors in the original decision and annulled the fine. We will closely review the entire decision.”
Meanwhile, the Commission told the publication that it would “carefully study the decision and consider possible next steps.” It may still appeal the court’s decision. This is one of several antitrust fines levied against Google by the European Commission in past years. Earlier this month, the EU’s highest court upheld a separate $2.7 billion fine against the company.
The commission imposed this fine on Google in 2017 after it found that the company, as Vestager described it, “abused its market dominance as a search engine by promoting its own comparison shopping service in its search results and undermining the services of competitors.”
Vestager is stepping down from her role as the EU’s competition commissioner in the next few weeks. She has been tough on big tech companies during her tenure, and the market abuse cases she has filed over the past few years led to the creation of the Digital Markets Act (DMA), a regulation designed to prevent the biggest companies in the industry from abusing their market power.
To recall, Circle to Search is an AI-powered feature that Google released early last year. You can access it by long-pressing your phone’s home button and then circling something with your finger. At its most basic, the feature is a way to use Google Search from anywhere on your phone, without having to switch between apps. This is especially useful when you want to do an image search because you don’t have to take a screenshot or tell Google what you’re looking for.
Of the improvements I mentioned, Google is adding one-tap actions for phone numbers, email addresses, and URLs, meaning that if Circle to Search recognizes them, it will allow you to call, email, or visit a website with a single tap. Again, no need to switch between apps to interact with those elements.
In less exciting news, Google is bringing AI overviews to Circle to Search. As long as your device is set to English, the company’s AI-generated search summaries will appear when relevant. Google said it was preparing to significantly expand the availability of AI overviews when it introduced Gemini 2.0 late last year, so the fact that they’re now integrated with Circle to Search shouldn’t be a surprise. As with any Google release, today’s update may take a few days to arrive on your device.