Advocate General backs Commission in €1.49bn Google AdSense appeal

The Commission's €1.49 billion AdSense abuse case against Google should be revived and sent back to the General Court, Advocate General Kokott proposed on 12 November 2026. In her Opinion in Case C-826/24 P, Commission v Google and Alphabet, she concludes the General Court erred in lawEuropa when it annulled the 2019 decisionEuropa for failure to demonstrate exclusionary effectsEuropa, and asks the Court of Justice to set the 2024 judgment asideEuropa and refer the case back, with costs reserved.

The March 2019 decision found Google dominant in 30 of 31 national online search advertising markets and the EEA-wide intermediation market, and fined it for three clauses in individually negotiated Google Services Agreements — an exclusivity clause running from January 2006, and placement and prior-authorisation clauses running from March 2009 — together a single continuous Article 102 infringement until September 2016. The General Court annulled the decision on Google's second, third and fourth pleasEuropa: the Commission had examined the duration of the commitments in the individual contracts only inadequatelyEuropa, so exclusionary effects were unprovenEuropa. The dominance finding stands, and the 2016 tail of the case is final, the Commission having conceded it.

Duration is one Intel criterion among four — the extent of dominance, market coverage, the terms and duration of the practice, and any exclusionary strategyEuropa — to be weighed in an overall assessmentEuropa, the Advocate General recalls, not a standalone hurdle requiring exhaustive treatment of every contractEuropa. She traces the criteria to the Court's 2017 Intel judgmentEuropa: once a dominant firm submits evidence that its conduct could not foreclose, the Commission must analyse all the circumstancesEuropa, but the General Court wrongly demanded a particularly detailed duration analysis for each clauseEuropa and treated shortfalls as fatal in themselvesEuropa. That imposed excessive demonstration dutiesEuropa and tilted the burden of proof against the CommissionEuropa. Short duration alone does not rule out anticompetitive effects, and Google's own shift from exclusivity to placement and prior authorisation between 2006 and 2015 sits uneasily, she notes, with its claim to compete purely on the merits.

Final judgment in Luxembourg is not possibleEuropa, she advises: the General Court never ruled on the admissibility of Google's attack on the single-infringement characterisation nor on the fine pleaEuropa, over which it has unlimited jurisdiction to cancel, reduce or increaseEuropa — and the fine must fall in any event for the conceded 2016 periodEuropa. Those points belong to the court of referral.

Legal basis: Opinion of Advocate General Kokott of 12 November 2026 in Case C-826/24 P, Commission v Google and Alphabet, on appeal against the judgment of 18 September 2024, Google and Alphabet v Commission (Google AdSense for Search), T-334/19.