The case, heard on Wednesday before the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), marks the latest chapter in Google's long-running legal battle with the European Commission over alleged anti-competitive practices in the online advertising market.
The dispute stems from a 2019 decision by the Commission, the European Union's competition watchdog, which fined Google €1.49 billion after concluding that the company abused its dominant position through its AdSense search advertising platform.
According to the Commission, Google inserted restrictive clauses into agreements with website publishers that prevented competitors from placing search advertisements on their platforms. Regulators argued that the contractual restrictions, which were in place between 2006 and 2016, reinforced Google's dominance in the online search advertising market.
Google removed the disputed clauses from its publisher contracts in 2016.
However, in 2024, the EU General Court annulled the penalty, ruling that the Commission had made errors in its assessment of the case. Dissatisfied with that judgment, the Commission appealed to the Court of Justice of the European Union, seeking to have the fine reinstated.
Representing Google before the court, lawyer Josh Holmes urged the judges to uphold the lower court's decision, insisting that the Commission's legal arguments failed to justify overturning the judgment.
"The Commission's new arguments are flawed. The General Court's reasons are clear and complete," Holmes told the five-judge panel.
He further argued that the Commission overlooked evidence demonstrating that Google's competitors had significant opportunities to compete in the search advertising market despite the contractual provisions.
On the other hand, Commission lawyer Anthony Dawes criticised the General Court's reasoning, arguing that it created an unnecessary burden for competition regulators by requiring them to revisit legal questions that had already been settled through previous case law.
"This finding turns case law on its head," Dawes told the court, warning that the lower court's interpretation could effectively make exclusive contractual clauses appear lawful unless regulators met a much higher evidentiary standard.
The Court of Justice is expected to receive a non-binding opinion from one of its Advocates General on November 12, before delivering its final judgment in the months that follow.
The AdSense case is one of four major antitrust actions brought by the European Commission against Google over the past two decades. Collectively, those penalties have totalled approximately €9.5 billion, making them among the largest competition fines imposed by the EU on a single technology company.
The annulment of the AdSense fine by the General Court represented a rare legal defeat for the Commission, and the outcome of the appeal is expected to have significant implications for future EU competition enforcement against dominant digital platforms.
The case is officially listed as C-826/24 P Commission v Google and Alphabet (Google AdSense).