The European Union’s highest court on Tuesday delivered a major victory in the bloc’s yearslong campaign to regulate the technology industry, knocking down appeals by Apple and Google in two landmark legal cases.
The decisions, issued by the Court of Justice of the European Union, bolster efforts in the region to clamp down on the world’s largest technology companies. Apple and Google have been frequent targets for E.U. regulators, and the companies have battled the cases for years.
In the Apple case, the court sided with a European Union order from 2016 for Ireland to collect 13 billion euros, worth about $14.4 billion today, in unpaid taxes from the company. Regulators determined that Apple had struck illegal deals with the Irish government that allowed the company to pay virtually nothing in taxes on its European business in some years.
Apple won an earlier decision to strike down the order, a ruling that the European Commission, the E.U.’s executive branch, appealed to the Court of Justice.
In the Google case, the court agreed with the commission’s 2017 decision to fine the company €2.4 billion for giving preferential treatment to its own price-comparison shopping service over rival offerings. Google lost an appeal in 2021.
When the European Union penalized Apple and Google, the cases represented a major shift in how the tech industry was regulated. Until then, governments around the world had largely taken a hands-off approach to tech oversight as Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook — now renamed Meta — ballooned in size and remade how people live, work, shop and communicate.
The cases helped establish the European Union and its antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager, as the world’s most aggressive tech industry watchdog. Other countries have followed Europe’s lead to intensify scrutiny of the sector’s business practices, particularly in the United States.
Yet years later, the cases have also come to symbolize the grindingly slow pace of the E.U. regulatory system and have raised broader questions about whether authorities can keep up with the rapidly evolving tech sector.
The two cases address different legal issues. The Google case is largely about antitrust law, while the Apple case centers on the European Union’s ability to intervene in areas of tax policy in one of its member nations.
Apple and Google are facing legal scrutiny on both sides of the Atlantic. This week, Google landed in U.S. federal court on antitrust charges brought by the Justice Department, which accused the company of abusing its dominance in the digital advertising sector. Last month, a federal judge ruled in a separate case that Google was a monopolist in internet search because it had rigged the search engine market. In December, a federal jury said Google’s management of the Google Play app store had also broken antitrust laws.
Apple also faces a Justice Department antitrust lawsuit over its iPhone policies.
In Europe, Google is appealing two other antitrust cases in addition to the shopping case. In 2018, regulators fined Google €4.34 billion for breaking antitrust laws to bolster its Android operating system. In 2019, the company was fined €1.49 billion for unfair business practices in the digital advertising market.
Apple is also facing E.U. charges related to its management of the app store and policies in the music streaming market.
The European Union’s protracted appeals process has drawn criticism from consumer rights groups and rival businesses that argue the slow pace has helped the two technology giants to solidify their dominant market positions.
The European Union is trying to speed up its handling of competition cases. In 2022, the bloc passed a law called the Digital Markets Act, which gives regulators broader authority to fine large tech platforms and force them to change business practices.
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