.jpg "Hai Duong took 33 samples of medicine, milk and functional foods for quality testing.")
.jpg "Be cautious about 'surfing' real estate before merging Hai Duong and Hai Phong")
.jpg "Thai Tan village (Nam Sach) is green from house to alley")
.jpg "Number of newly established enterprises in Hai Duong increased by 21.3%")
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Google suffered a legal blow on January 11 when counsel for the European Court of Justice recommended upholding a 2.4 billion euro ($2.6 billion) fine for anti-competitive practices in the online search market.
Google has appealed to this court against the fine, imposed by the European Commission (EC) in 2017.
Although such recommendations are not legally binding, they carry some weight and are often referred to by European Union (EU) judges.
In this case, the above-mentioned advice will lead to the legal battle that Google has been pursuing to overturn the 2.4 billion euro fine imposed by the European Commission (EC) in 2017. At that time, the EC believed that Google had abused its dominant position in the field of online search, by making the Google Shopping service appear prominently in search results.
At the time, the €2.4 billion ($2.6 billion) fine was no small amount. The European Court of Justice held its first hearing on the case in 2021, in which Google lost. The court ruled against Google and upheld the fine. However, it partially dismissed the EC's case, saying that the EC had failed to provide evidence of anti-competitive effects on the search engine market. Google then appealed to the European Court of Justice, seeking to overturn the court's ruling.
In reviewing the case, the European Court of Justice’s legal adviser, Juliane Kokott, asked the judges to dismiss the appeal and uphold the fine against Google. She argued that Google’s preference for its own services over those of its rivals was an abuse of its dominant position in the online search industry, if it gained, or even had the potential to gain, a competitive advantage.
Google said it would review the legal opinion and await the final ruling of the European Court of Justice.
In recent years, the EC has fined several major US tech companies in an effort to strengthen regulation of online services and better protect European consumers and companies.
