Nov. 10 (UPI) — A top European Union court on Wednesday rejected an appeal from tech giant Google and upheld a $2.8 billion fine handed out four years ago that punished the company for unfairly directing users to its shopping site.
The European Commission imposed the fine on Google in 2017 for giving its shopping site priority in search results and illegally funneling users there.
The EU General Court concluded on Wednesday that the company violated EU competition rules. The fine was 5% of the daily average revenue of Google’s parent company.
“The General Court rejects the arguments put forward by Google,” the court wrote in its ruling.
The decision faulted Google for giving “poor placement” in search results to competitor shopping sites.
The court said the EU properly weighed the seriousness of Google’s practices and determined that they were done intentionally to harm competitors.
The court underscored the “particularly serious nature of the infringement” said the offenses were intentional, and not the result of negligence.
“The General Court thus rules that, in reality, Google favors its own comparison shopping service over competing services, rather than a better result over another result,” it said.
Google said that it made significant changes four years ago after the EU imposed the fine.
“Our approach has worked successfully for more than three years, generating billions of clicks for more than 700 comparison shopping services,” the company said, according to CNBC.
Google is also appealing two other punitive fines in the European Union that totaled more than $9 billion. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, earned more than $180 billion in revenues last year.