The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has upheld a decision requiring Google to pay a $2.6 billion fine for abusing its market power in relation to online ad services.

The original fine was levied by the European Commission back in 2017, which accused the global tech giant of misusing its market hegemony and giving unfair preference to it’s own shopping recommendations against rival platforms.

Google had appealed against that decision, but Europe’s top court has now said the European Commission was right to call the search giant’s actions discriminatory.

“The Commission found that, in 13 countries of the European Economic Area (EEA), Google had given preference, on its general search results pages, to the results of its own comparison shopping service over those of competing comparison shopping services”, Tuesday’s ruling said.

Google has said it was disappointed by the decision, given that it had already made necessary changes many years ago in order to meet the requirements set by the European Commission.

In a statement the tech giant said: “Our approach has worked successfully for more than seven years, generating billions of clicks for more than 800 comparison shopping services,” according to the BBC.

The original case against Google was brought up by British firm Founders. Other competitors then also made similar complaints against the internet giant. Google will now also have to pay the costs incurred by the European Commission for the fighting the case.

Two major decisions in a week by ECJ

This was the second major decision this week by Europe’s top court against international tech giants. Also on Tuesday, the ECJ asked Apple to pay Ireland $14 billion in unpaid taxes.

Back in 2016, the European Commission had decided in a ruling that Ireland had given Apple certain tax advantages, something that other companies could not benefit from. That decision was overturned by the lower court in 2020, but the ECJ on Tuesday upheld the original verdict by the European Commission in 2016.

“The pair of rulings represent victories for [Margrethe] Vestager, the EU’s competition chief who is expected to depart the role this year. During her decade-long tenure, she has repeatedly taken on high-profile cases targeting the world’s biggest technology companies.”, the Financial Times has commented.