Google $GOOGL loses EU appeal; €4.125B Android fine upheld

€4.125B is the confirmed penalty after the Court of Justice of the European Union dismissed the appeal by Google and Alphabet in Case C-738/22 P. The July 2 judgment leaves in place the General Court’s revised fine for anticompetitive practices connected to Android, Google Search, Chrome and Play Store licensing.

The case began with the European Commission’s 2018 decision, which imposed an original fine of €4.342865B. The General Court later upheld the single-and-continuous-infringement classification but partially annulled the revenue-share portion and reset the fine at €4.125B. Alphabet remained jointly and severally liable for €1.520605895B.

The Court said the General Court did not err when assessing the effects of Android pre-installation conditions. It accepted that the lower court could consider the economic context, including revenue-share agreements, and that a systematic counterfactual analysis was not required to establish abuse of dominance in this case. It also said the lower court was entitled to find status quo bias in favor of pre-installed apps.

For markets, the event is regulatory rather than an earnings release. The fine is already known in scale, but the final appeal result removes a major legal uncertainty around one of Alphabet’s largest EU competition penalties. The next items to watch are the company’s disclosed legal accruals, any Android commercial changes in the European Economic Area, and whether EU competition enforcement continues to shape platform bundling rules.

Source: Court of Justice of the EU press release No. 93/26.

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