Apple, Google lose EU court fights

Apple and Google lost on appeal to the European Union’s highest court Tuesday in two separate cases requiring the tech giants to face billions of dollars in fines. 

The decisions by the Court of Justice of the European Union mark a significant win for the bloc’s antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager.

“Today is a huge win for European citizens and tax justice,” Vestager said in a post on the social platform X about the Apple case. 

The EU’s top court upheld a 2016 decision by the European Commission finding that Ireland had improperly granted Apple tax breaks worth €13 billion, or about $14.4 billion, over a period stretching more than two decades.  

The Commission’s decision had previously been overturned by a lower court in 2020. The Hill has reached out to Apple for comment. 

The Court of Justice also upheld a €2.4 billion, or about $2.6 billion, fine on Google for abusing its dominant position in search by favoring its own comparison shopping service over its rivals — a decision that Vestager touted as a “big win for digital fairness.” 

A Google spokesperson said in a statement that the company was disappointed with the court’s decision but noted that it made changes in 2017 following the European Commission’s initial decision in the case. 

“Our approach has worked successfully for more than seven years, generating billions of clicks for more than 800 comparison shopping services,” the spokesperson added. 

The ruling comes just weeks after a U.S. judge found that Google illegally maintained a monopoly over online search and only one day after a second antitrust trial against the tech giant over its dominance in advertising technology got underway in Virginia.