He argued that regulators had overlooked evidence demonstrating that rival advertising providers remained capable of competing despite Google's contractual arrangements. According to Google, the General Court correctly identified flaws in the Commission's reasoning and properly concluded that the fine should be annulled.

The European Commission, however, maintained that the lower court departed from settled case law by relaxing the legal framework governing exclusivity agreements. Commission lawyer Anthony Dawes argued that the General Court had wrongly interfered with the Commission's assessment of Google's market conduct and should not have invalidated the penalty.

Part of a wider antitrust battle

The AdSense litigation is only one of several major competition cases brought against Google by European regulators over the past two decades.

Collectively, the company has faced approximately €9.5 billion in EU antitrust penalties covering areas including comparison shopping services, the Android operating system and online advertising. The AdSense case is notable because it represents one of the rare occasions on which the Commission suffered a significant setback before the General Court.

The hearing also comes just weeks after Google lost another high-profile appeal before the CJEU concerning a €4.1 billion Android antitrust fine, illustrating that the company continues to face intense regulatory scrutiny across multiple aspects of its business.

Why the case matters

Beyond the financial implications, the dispute raises important questions about how competition authorities should assess allegedly exclusionary conduct by dominant digital platforms.

Under Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), companies holding a dominant market position are prohibited from abusing that dominance in ways that distort competition. However, European courts have increasingly required regulators to conduct a detailed assessment of the actual competitive effects of commercial practices rather than relying solely on their form.

The Commission argues that Google's contractual restrictions were sufficiently exclusionary to justify intervention. Google, on the other hand, maintains that competitors remained capable of accessing the market and that regulators failed to prove any genuine foreclosure of competition.

The CJEU's eventual judgment is therefore expected to clarify the evidential threshold that competition authorities must satisfy when challenging exclusivity arrangements in digital markets.

What happens next?

The CJEU is expected to receive a non-binding opinion from the Advocate General on 12 November 2026 before delivering its final judgment at a later date. While the Advocate General's opinion does not bind the court, it is frequently influential in shaping the court's eventual reasoning.

Regardless of the outcome, it is likely to become another significant precedent in the evolving body of EU competition law governing digital markets and the responsibilities of dominant technology platforms.

Source: Reuters