Google’s appeal against EU record £3.8bn fine begins – how did we get here?
Three years after receiving a record fine from the European Commission alongside an order to stop abusing its control of the Android operating system, Google is set to have its day in court.
Back in 2018 the company was fined €4.34bn (£3.8bn) for forcing phone makers to pre-install apps including Google Search and Chrome to the exclusion of other search engines and web browsers.
The fine was a fraction of the €116bn (£99bn) parent company Alphabet recorded in revenues that year, but the real cost to the company was the threat to its future income if smartphones landed in consumers’ hands without Google apps already installed.
Google’s five-day appeal against the decision is being heard at European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, where the company hopes to have the Commission’s decision annulled in its entirety.
A failure to do so could completely reshape the smartphone landscape, but other challenges targeting Google inside the US pose a far more significant risk to the company and could lead to the search giant being broken up into several smaller businesses.
Google’s appeal will be heard in Luxembourg from Monday
Breaking up monopolies
While there are an over-abundance of comparisons between the oil industry of the late 19th century and the tech industry of today, the slow movement of regulators is one of the most striking similarities.
It was in 1890 that US Congress passed a law to tackle the monopolies which had sprung up over the preceding half century, but it took more than three decades for that law to be used to break up Standard Oil, a company which by 1904 controlled more than 90% of oil production in America.
Standard Oil’s business excelled due to its innovations in refining oil, but also because the company had rapaciously acquired rivals and used its commercial heft to strike deals with railroad companies (themselves a target for early antitrust action) at discounted rates which the remaining oil businesses could not compete with.
In a landmark ruling in 1911, the US Supreme Court upheld that Standard Oil was an illegal monopoly and ordered it to be broken up into 34 independent companies. Though that power is not available to the European Commission, there is a growing movement in the US calling for similar actions to be taken against tech giants whom some believe are guilty of the same anticompetitive practices.
Standard Oil controlled more than 90% of US oil production at its height
Modern antitrust law
Google is a very different company to Standard Oil, but the alleged unfairness of its practices – using its control of Android to force phone manufacturers who want to include the Google Play app store on their phones to also pre-install Google Search and Chrome – follows the same model of undermining rivals.
The investigation into Google coercing phone manufacturers formally began in 2015, although the Commission made its first enquiries about the company’s practices in 2013 when an association of Google’s rivals calling itself FairSearch lodged a complaint against its business practices.
The ruling came three years later in 2018 and now, three years later, Google’s appeal has reached the European Court of Justice. Thomas Vinje, counsel to FairSearch and partner at law firm Clifford Chance, told Sky News he expected there could be another appeal after the hearing in Luxembourg.
“Antitrust enforcement is not, on its own at least, sufficiently robust, sufficiently effective, to be able to address these really extraordinary concerns. I’m not sure the world has ever faced a situation where there is such a concentration of power in such a central element of today’s economy, and antitrust law is not up to the task,” he said.
“That is largely because they’re complex cases,” Mr Vinje explained.
“They’re more complex than rail roads or oil distribution – I’m not saying those are simple – but the issues faced in Big Tech today are a hell of a lot more complicated. So there is a hell of a lot more room for obfuscation… and dragging things out.
“So by virtue of the completely appropriate rights that defendants have in these cases, the cases just take too long.”
The Commission accused Google of attempting to cement the dominance of Google Search
What is Google’s response and appeal?
Google, which claims the most popular search term on rival search engines such as Bing is the word “Google” itself and which controls more than 90% of the market for web searches, disputes the Commission’s arguments about its dominance, although that won’t feature prominently in its arguments next week.
In a news briefing ahead of the hearing, the company explained to journalists that it believes a lot has changed in the years since the Commission issued its decision.
Key to Google’s appeal is the argument that its control ensures Android is a platform which can run across millions of smart devices made by different manufacturers, increasing the economic benefits for developers – including rival web browser makers such as Opera, which is supporting Google’s appeal – and ultimately consumers.
Google will note that a revenue sharing agreement it had with phone manufacturers and mobile network operators, cited as an illegal contractual restriction by the Commission, ended in 2014.
The company also strongly disputes the way that the Commission calculated the €4.34bn (£3.8bn) fine, something the Commission said was “calculated on the basis of the value of Google’s revenue from search advertising services on Android devices” inside the European Economic Area.
The US Department of Justice has filed charges against Google
What is the threat in the US?
Even if Google succeeds in getting the Commission’s decision annulled or amended, it faces three more challenges in the US which are backed by severe powers to tackle monopolies.
The first complaint was filed last October in a case led by the Trump administration’s Department of Justice and joined by 11 states – though with apparent bipartisan support – charging Alphabet with “unlawfully maintaining monopolies in the markets for general search services”.
It followed a congressional report which accused Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google of monopolising the digital market and recommended antitrust laws be used to break them up.
Two more cases were brought against Google in December.
One from the attorneys general of 35 states accuses the company of anticompetitive practices in order to retain its dominance in search, while another filed by the attorneys general from 10 states focuses on the company’s monopoly power in digital advertising markets.
Google has denied engaging in anticompetitive practices.
Jurors in the trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs have reached a verdict on four of the five counts against him – but the hip-hop mogul will have to wait to learn his fate.
In tense scenes towards the end of the court day on Tuesday, jurors sent a note to say they had reached verdicts on two charges of sex trafficking and two charges of transportation for prostitution, but had been unable to reach a unanimous decision on the charge of racketeering conspiracy.
Combs‘s lawyers surrounded him at the defence table after the note was sent to the court, and at one point he held his head in his hands.
After discussions with prosecution and defence lawyers, Judge Arun Subramanian told jurors to continue deliberating on Wednesday rather than deliver a partial verdict.
Combs and one of his lawyers, Marc Agnifilo, earlier in the day. Pic: Reuters/Jane Rosenberg
The jury has testimony from more than 30 witnesses to consider – including Combs’s former long-term partner Casandra “Cassie” Ventura and another former girlfriend called “Jane”, who testified under a pseudonym to protect her identity.
Prosecutors allege the 55-year-old rapper used his fame and power to force Cassie and “Jane” into drug-fuelled sex sessions with male sex workers, which were referred to as “freak-offs”, “wild king nights”, or “hotel nights”.
He was also physically violent and blackmailed them with footage, jurors were told.
They also heard from “Mia”, a former employee who alleged she was sexually assaulted by the rapper on several occasions during her career. She also testified using a pseudonym.
Combs has pleaded not guilty to all charges and his defence team has argued that prosecutors are attempting to criminalise what they say was a consensual “swingers lifestyle”.
The rapper chose not to testify and his lawyers did not call any witnesses, building their arguments instead through lengthy cross-examinations of the witnesses called by the prosecution.
What is racketeering conspiracy?
Racketeering conspiracy, which is count one on the verdict sheet, is the most complicated of the charges against Combs.
Jurors need to decide not only whether the rapper created a “racketeering enterprise”, but also if he was involved in various offences as part of this, including kidnapping, arson and bribery.
The charge falls under the US’s RICO laws (the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations Act), which is best known for being used in relation to organised crime and drug cartel cases.
Read more:
Prosecution’s closing argument
Defence’s closing argument
After closing arguments last week, jurors began deliberation on Monday and had spent about 13 hours discussing in total by the time they sent their note.
Before reaching the verdict on the four counts, they had requested to review crucial testimony from Cassie about her account of an assault in a hotel in Los Angeles in 2016.
Captured on CCTV, the footage was played in court several times – showing Combs, wearing only a towel and socks, beating, kicking and dragging Cassie in a hallway.
His defence team admitted in their opening statement that this was domestic violence, and said the music star regretted these actions – but that they did not amount to any of the federal charges against him.
Read more:
The rise and fall of Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs
What we learned from Cassie’s testimony
As well as Cassie’s evidence on that assault, they asked to see her testimony on an incident at the Cannes Film Festival in 2013 – when she said Combs accused her of taking drugs from him and kicked her off of his yacht.
On their way back to the US, she told the court, he threatened to release explicit videos of her having sex with an escort.
Jurors also wanted to review testimony given by a male sex worker at the start of the trial.
Combs could face 15 years to life in prison if he is convicted of all charges.
Jurors will continue deliberating on the racketeering conspiracy charge on Wednesday.
Elon Musk has stepped up his attacks on Donald Trump’s sweeping tax and spending bill – weeks after a spectacular fallout between the world’s richest man and the US president.
Following weeks of relative silence after clashing with Mr Trump over his “big beautiful bill”, the billionaire vowed to unseat politicians who support it.
In a post on X, Musk said those who had campaigned on cutting spending but then backed the bill “should hang their heads in shame”.
He added: “And they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth.”
Musk also threatened to put their faces on a poster which said “liar” and “voted to increase America’s debt” by $5trn (£3.6trn).
The posts attracted a swift reply from Mr Trump, who claimed the billionaire “may get more subsidy than any human being in history” for his electric car business.
“Without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa,” he wrote on Truth Social.
“No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE. Perhaps we should have DOGE take a good, hard, look at this? BIG MONEY TO BE SAVED!!!”
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Elon’s dad on the Musk-Trump bust-up
Musk spent at least $250m (£182m) supporting Mr Trump in his presidential campaign and then led the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which sacked about 120,000 federal employees.
He has argued the legislation would greatly increase the US national debt and wipe out the savings he claimed he achieved through DOGE.
As the Senate discussed the package, Musk called it “utterly insane and destructive”.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO said the bill’s massive spending indicated “we live in a one-party country – the PORKY PIG PARTY!!”
“Time for a new political party that actually cares about the people,” he wrote.
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Musk previously said some of his social media posts during his dramatic fallout with Mr Trump “went too far”.
He had shared a series of posts on X, including one that described Mr Trump’s tax and spending bill as a “disgusting abomination”.
He also claimed, in a since-deleted post, that the president appeared in files relating to the disgraced paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.
But Musk later wrote: “I regret some of my posts about President @realDonaldTrump last week. They went too far.”
In response, the president told the New York Post: “I thought it was very nice that he did that.”
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