The European Court of Justice (ECJ) on Wednesday annulled the European Commission’s fine of $1.7 billion on Google due to its alleged abusive advertising practices via AdSense.
The fine, imposed five years ago, was found to have been erroneous in its assessment of the duration of the clauses, as the commission reportedly did not establish that the three clauses constituted Google’s abuse of its dominant position, according to a ECJ statement.
Google AdSense, the search engine’s advertising platform, works as an intermediate for publishers to push their advertisements on websites and generate revenues from them.
Google Services Agreement (GSA) contains clauses to govern its ad service. Three of these clauses were cited by the Commission to fine the search engine for hindering competitiveness
The three clauses, as per the ECJ statement, are the exclusivity, the placement, and the prior authorization causes, which the European Commission cited for AdSense’s dominance.