Google wins legal bid to overturn 1.5 billion euro antitrust fine in EU digital ad case

Google has won a court challenge against a 1.49 billion euro European Union antitrust fine imposed five years ago that targeted its online advertising business. The EU’s General Court said Wednesday it was throwing out the 2019 penalty imposed by the European Commission, which is the 27-nation bloc’s top antitrust enforcer. The commission’s ruling applied to a narrow portion of Google’s ad business: ads that the U.S. tech giant sold next to Google search results on third-party websites. Regulators had found that Google inserted exclusivity clauses in its contracts that barred these websites from running similarly placed ads sold by Google’s rivals.