
Is there no option between keeping the billion-dollar fine or entirely vacating it? Maybe a teensy-weensy half billion dollars?
Google has some thank-you cards to send, as the European Union's General Court (GC) has nullified a €1.49 billion ($1.66 billion) fine levied against the tech giant for anti-competitive advertising behavior. Google was fined the aforementioned amount by the European Commission in 2019 for abusing its dominance in online …
The problem is that laws have letters which must be obeyed, not spirits
If someone works out a way around the letter of the law which utterly violates the spirit of the law, it's still legal
In this case, the setup complies with the former but not the latter (we all know how hard it is to change an established supplier etc)
The decision was largely technical: the court agreed with the case in general but said that the Commission had failed to provide sufficient evidence to prove it. Unsurprisingly, some of the alleged contracts are secret and were, therefore, not given in evidence.
The Commission can, as it has done with previous judgements, take the case to the ECJ, though the burden of proof will remain a problem. Partly as a result of the case, Google has changed its business practices and this, often as much as any fines, is one of the aims of anti-competitive cases.
"Unsurprisingly, some of the alleged contracts are secret"
Very suprisingly if the agreements can't be ordered to be entered into evidence: The court can decree that they don't exist and any legal obligations are void
Courts usually don't like "secret" agreements which the court is not privy to
So, the EU Commission brought a case in 2019, three years after Brexit. That a *UK* company had been unfairly treated by an *American* company. And the UK company has already gone bankrupt anyway, so doesn’t have any lawyers to represent it after its death.
But the EU raise a fine “on its behalf”, where the half a billion dollars goes to the EU Commission and none goes to the UK company, which wasn’t in the EU anyway.
What a protection racket.