Google is fighting to keep a €1.49 billion EU antitrust fine scrapped over old AdSense contract rules

• Google asked the Court of Justice of the European Union to reject the Commission’s appeal of a 2024 ruling that scrapped a €1.49 billion AdSense fine.
• EU regulators are preparing new Digital Markets Act penalties against Google in the coming week, potentially worth hundreds of millions of euros.
• A court adviser will issue a non-binding opinion on November 12, with a final ruling on the appeal to follow, while Google faces potential 10 percent global revenue fines under DMA enforcement.

• €1.49B AdSense fine from 2019 now under reversal challenge at EU top court
• 10% Maximum penalty as share of global revenue under Digital Markets Act rules
• €402.83B Alphabet’s 2024 annual revenue, setting the penalty calculation ceiling

Google faced two critical moments in its clash with European regulators this week, each carrying substantial financial and strategic implications for the technology giant.

At the Court of Justice of the European Union on Wednesday, Google asked the court’s highest instance to reject the European Commission’s appeal of a lower court decision that eliminated a €1.49 billion fine originally issued in 2019.

The lower court had found that EU competition regulators made procedural errors when building their case against Google’s AdSense advertising platform, ruling that the Commission had failed to prove how restrictive contract clauses between 2006 and 2016 actually harmed competition or prevented rivals from winning business.

The stakes extend well beyond this single case. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, generated $402.83 billion in annual revenue last year, meaning that under the Digital Markets Act, the EU’s new enforcement tool for dominant technology platforms, penalties could theoretically reach as high as 10 percent of that figure.

Regulators are simultaneously preparing fresh fines under this legislation for the coming week, potentially worth hundreds of millions of euros, signaling that Europe’s enforcement agenda against Google continues to accelerate rather than slow.

Google’s AdSense defense hinges on whether competitors faced real market obstacles

Google’s lawyer Josh Holmes told the Court of Justice that the lower court’s 2024 decision was correct in finding that the Commission had not adequately demonstrated harm to competition.

Holmes argued the original ruling was “clear and complete” in reasoning, and he emphasized that the lower court had found evidence showing that rival advertising platforms had genuine opportunities to win business from third-party websites despite Google’s contract terms.

This argument frames the dispute as fundamentally about whether regulators met their legal burden of proof rather than whether Google’s conduct was aggressive.

The European Commission’s lawyer Anthony Dawes disputed this characterization forcefully. “This finding turns case law on its head,” Dawes told the court, arguing that accepting the lower court’s logic would effectively treat exclusive contract clauses as legal by default unless regulators could prove they prevented all competition.

Such a standard, he contended, would place an unfair and impractical burden on competition authorities to demonstrate near-total foreclosure rather than meaningful competitive harm.

The Commission’s position reflects a broader enforcement philosophy: that large platforms with dominant positions bear a higher responsibility to avoid restrictions that could exclude rivals, even if those rivals retain some market access.

Google abandoned the disputed AdSense contract terms in 2016, nearly a decade before the Commission issued the fine in 2019. The company’s argument now rests partly on that remedial action, that removing the clauses should weigh in its favor when evaluating whether the original conduct warranted the penalty.

However, the Commission proceeded with the fine anyway, treating the removal as insufficient because the harm to competition allegedly occurred during the decade when the restrictions were in place.

Incoming Digital Markets Act fines target search ranking favoritism and app store restrictions

While the Court of Justice considers Google’s appeal, the Commission has signaled that new enforcement action is imminent. Internal Commission documents reviewed by media outlets indicate that EU regulators plan to issue penalties under the Digital Markets Act within the coming week on two separate grounds.

The first allegation concerns Google’s search results: regulators believe Google has systematically promoted its own shopping, travel, and other vertical services above results from competing services, giving Google’s own offerings artificial visibility advantages.

The second area of concern focuses on the Google Play Store, the company’s app distribution platform for Android devices. The Commission is expected to find that Google has improperly restricted app developers’ ability to direct users toward competing payment platforms and app stores.

Under the Digital Markets Act, regulators can fine companies up to 10 percent of their global annual revenue, a ceiling that translates to roughly $40.28 billion in Google’s case.

Even if actual fines fall well below that maximum, penalties in the hundreds of millions of euros would represent material costs that institutional investors track carefully when assessing the company’s financial exposure to regulatory risk.

Google responded to news of the pending action with a statement saying it was “keen to bring these investigations to a close so we can get back to developing innovative products for our users.” The company has also criticized certain changes it has already implemented under the Digital Markets Act framework, suggesting resistance to the broader enforcement direction.

Court adviser’s November 12 opinion will preview likely direction of top court’s final ruling

A court adviser, formally known as an advocate general, is scheduled to issue a non-binding opinion on November 12 regarding Google’s appeal of the lower court’s decision that eliminated the €1.49 billion fine. While such opinions are not legally binding, they carry substantial weight with judges on the Court of Justice.

Historical data shows that the court follows its advocate general’s recommendations in the majority of cases, making the November opinion a key indicator of how the final ruling will likely go.

The timing of this opinion creates a compressed decision window for Google. The company faces simultaneous pressure from multiple fronts: the appeal of the existing fine decision, new Digital Markets Act investigations, and potential ongoing penalties if it fails to comply with regulatory demands within a 60-day deadline.

For institutional investors, the convergence of these disputes illustrates the depth of Europe’s antitrust focus on Google and the scale of financial exposure that could accumulate across multiple enforcement actions over the next 12 months.

The outcome of the AdSense appeal will also carry broader precedential weight for how European courts interpret the Commission’s authority to pursue antitrust cases against dominant platforms. If the Court of Justice reverses the lower court and sides with the Commission, it would affirm a more aggressive standard for evaluating exclusive contract terms.

If the court upholds the lower court’s decision, it would signal that the Commission’s burden of proof for demonstrating competitive harm cannot simply assume foreclosure based on contractual exclusivity alone, a principle that could constrain future enforcement actions.

The court adviser’s opinion on November 12 will provide the clearest signal of whether the €1.49 billion fine is likely to be reinstated or whether the lower court’s reasoning will survive judicial scrutiny, while the Commission’s expected announcement of new Digital Markets Act penalties within days will determine the scale of Google’s near-term regulatory costs and compliance obligations.

Original reporting: cryptopolitan.com