An adviser to the EU's top court said on Thursday that the General Court erred in 2024 when it annulled Google's €1.49 billion ($1.7 billion) AdSense fine, and proposed that the judgment be set aside and the case sent back for a fresh ruling. The fine, imposed in March 2019, was one of six EU antitrust penalties that have cost Google €10.38 billion over nearly two decades, and it was the only one a court ever threw out.
The case concerns AdSense for Search, which lets websites with built-in search boxes run Google search ads for a revenue share. From March 2009, Google's template contracts with publishers carried clauses restricting or barring ads from rival services, including an exclusivity clause, a placement clause reserving the most visible space for Google's ads, and a prior-authorisation clause for changes. The Commission found these practices ran from 2006 to 2016, when Google dropped or amended the clauses after Brussels opened proceedings.S2
The General Court accepted much of the Commission's findings but annulled the decision, finding the Commission had not sufficiently assessed the duration of the publisher contracts. Advocate General Juliane Kokott argued on Thursday that this got the law wrong, because the lower court had already accepted the clauses were capable of producing the exclusionary effects the Commission found. A cumulative assessment of the contracts, which the Commission carried out, was enough, and no contract-by-contract dissection was required.S2
An Advocate General's opinion does not bind the court, and even if the judges follow it, the fine would not simply snap back; the case would return to the General Court for a new judgment. That ruling is expected next year. Google has reason to take the opinion seriously, since Kokott also wrote the advisory opinions in the Shopping and Android cases, and the court followed her both times, confirming the €2.4 billion Shopping fine in 2024 and upholding the €4.1 billion Android fine in July.S2
The ledger keeps growing regardless. Google is separately contesting a near-€3 billion adtech fine, and its first Digital Markets Act penalty has rivals lining up damages claims across Europe. The AdSense annulment was the one ruling in Google's favour that suggested Brussels could lose.S2
