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.
Two military personnel have been shot near the White House in Washington DC.
A suspect has been taken into custody and the area secured, police said.
The White House was placed into lockdown, while US President Donald Trump is away in Florida.
Mr Trump posted on his Truth Social platform to say the two National Guard members had been “critically wounded”, adding that the “animal” that shot them “is also severely wounded, but regardless, will pay a very steep price”.
Washington DC shooting latest updates
Pics: AP
Both guardsmen were shot in the head, according to Sky’s US partner network, NBC News, quoting an official and a senior official directly briefed on the investigation.
The shooting will be investigated by the FBI as a possible act of terror, two senior US law enforcement officials told NBC.
The suspect, who used a handgun in the attack, has been initially identified as an Afghan national, the officials said.
But investigators are still trying to confirm all of the individual’s details.
West Virginia’s governor initially said both victims were members of his state’s National Guard and had died from their injuries – but later posted to say there were “conflicting reports about the condition of our two Guard members”.
Patrick Morrisey had said: “These brave West Virginians lost their lives in the service of their country.”
Pic: AP
FBI director Kash Patel said two National Guard members were “brazenly attacked in a horrendous act of violence”.
At a news conference he clarified they were in a “critical condition”.
Jeff Carroll, chief of the metropolitan police department in the area, said the attack began at 2.15pm local time (7.15pm in the UK) while National Guard members were on “high visibility patrols in the area”.
He said: “A suspect came around the corner, raised his arm with a firearm and discharged it at the National Guard.
“The National Guard members were… able to – after some back and forth – able to subdue the individual and bring them into custody.”
Washington DC mayor Muriel Bowser called the attack a “targeted shooting”.
Pics: AP
Social media footage showed first responders attempting CPR on one of the soldiers as they treated the other on a pavement covered in glass.
Nearby other officers could be seen restraining an individual on the ground.
Emergency personnel cordon off an area near where the National Guard soldiers were shot. Pics: AP
The scene has been cordoned off by police tape, while agents from the US Secret Service and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were on the scene, as National Guard troops stood sentry nearby. The FBI was also on the scene, the agency’s director said.
The Joint DC Task Force confirmed it was responding to an incident in the vicinity of the White House.
The DC Police Department posted on X: “Critical Incident: MPD is on the scene of a shooting at 17th and I Street, NW. Please avoid the area.”
In an update, the force said: “The scene is secured. One suspect is in custody.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “The White House is aware and actively monitoring this tragic situation.
“The president has been briefed.”
Mr Trump was at his resort in Palm Beach ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday, while US vice president JD Vance was in Kentucky.
US defence secretary Pete Hegseth said Mr Trump had asked for 500 more troops to be deployed to Washington DC after the shooting.
Flights arriving at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport were temporarily halted due to its proximity to the scene of the shooting, the US Federal Aviation Administration said.
Hundreds of National Guard members have been patrolling the nation’s capital after Mr Trump issued an emergency order in August, which federalised the local police force and sent in the guard from eight states and the District of Columbia.
Charges against Donald Trump and others in an election interference case in the US state of Georgia have been dismissed.
Pete Skandalakis, the prosecutor who recently took over the case, said in court papers on Wednesday that he has decided to take no further action.
It was unlikely the legal action against the US president could have progressed while he was still in office, but the 14 others – including Mr Trump’s personal lawyer, the former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, and ex-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows – had still faced charges.
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Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani was among those charged. File pic: AP/Ted Shaffrey
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis announced the charges in 2023. Pic: AP
The case was dismissed in full by Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee after Mr Skandalakis submitted his decision.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis had alleged a wide-ranging conspiracy to illegally overturn Mr Trump’s narrow loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the key swing state in the 2020 presidential election.
Charges against Mr Trump centred around a phone call he made to Georgia’s top election official, secretary of state Brad Raffensperger.
Mr Trump told his fellow Republican: “I just want to find 11,780 votes”, recordings of the conversation showed.
Mr Trump and 18 co-defendants were initially accused.
Four of the accused made plea deals with prosecutors, while the others, including Mr Trump, Mr Giuliani and Mr Meadows, pleaded not guilty.
A police mugshot taken of Donald Trump after he was booked on 13 election fraud charges in Georgia. Pic: Reuters
An angry-looking Mr Trump was pictured as he was booked on the charges at the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office, and copies of the mugshot generated sales of more than $7m (£5.3m) in a matter of days, his campaign said.
In a 22-page memo explaining his decision, Mr Skandalakis noted the entire case is “without precedent,” and pointed in part to the challenges of trying a case against a sitting president.
Mr Skandalakis wrote: “In my professional opinion, the citizens of Georgia are not served by pursuing this case in full for another five to ten years”.
He said he was ending the case “to serve the interests of justice and promote judicial finality” and his decision is “not guided by a desire to advance an agenda but is based on my beliefs and understanding of the law”.
Mr Trump’s lawyer in the case, Steve Sadow, welcomed the end of what he called a “political persecution” of the US president.
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“This case should never have been brought. A fair and impartial prosecutor has put an end to this lawfare,” he said.
Ms Willis, who brought the case in August 2023, was disqualified from prosecuting it last December.
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An appeals court in the state capital, Atlanta, ruled that a romantic relationship she had with Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor she chose to lead the case, created “a significant appearance of impropriety.”
Defence lawyers claimed the district attorney profited from the case when Wade used his earnings to pay for holidays the pair took.
She appealed the verdict, but lost her case in September, despite Mr Wade having quit his role.
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