A European Union court in Luxembourg has annulled a nearly 1.5 billion euros ($1.67 billion) antitrust fine for Google, imposed by Brussels against the tech giant for an abuse of dominance over online advertising five years ago.
The judges ruled on Wednesday that the European Commission had not provided sufficient evidence that Google had abused its dominant position in search engine advertising with its AdSense for Search product.
The latest ruling can still be appealed before the European Court of Justice, the EU's highest court.
AdSense for Search allowed website publishers to integrate Google search masks into their sites, display ads linked to search queries, and receive a part of the revenue generated through these ads.
Contracts between the tech giant and some website publishers "contained clauses restricting or prohibiting the display of ads from services competing with" the Google product, a court release said.
Although the judges confirmed most of the EU Commission's arguments, they decided to annul the fine. The commission had not taken all relevant circumstances into account when determining whether Google's contractual clauses were abusive, the court said.
"We made changes to our contracts in 2016 to remove the relevant provisions, even before the commission's decision," Google said in a statement on Wednesday.
"We are pleased that the court has recognized errors in the original decision and annulled the fine. We will review the full decision closely," the company said.
The legal dispute goes back to a complaint filed with the German Federal Cartel Office in 2010, which prompted an investigation by the European Commission.
In 2019, the Brussels-based competition watchdog concluded that Google had infringed EU competition law and imposed a fine of 1.49 billion euros.
Google appealed to the EU's General Court for the penalty to be overturned.
The latest decision comes shortly after Google suffered a defeat in a different antitrust case in the EU.
Last week, the EU's top court confirmed a 2.4 billion euro fine imposed by the commission for a competition breach with Google's price comparison service Google Shopping.
The tech giant had abused its market power by favoring the results of its own price comparison service over those of its competitors, the ruling said. Google had already made changes to its service before the decision.