EU Court Adviser Moves to Revive Google's 1.49 Billion Euro AdSense Antitrust Fine

When Europe's competition enforcers fined Google 1.49 billion euros over its AdSense for Search contracts in March 2019, the penalty looked like the end of a long investigation into advertising boxes embedded on third party websites. Instead it became the one Brussels antitrust ruling a court struck down. On 18 September 2024 the General Court annulled the decision outright, holding that the Commission had not shown the contested clauses produced exclusionary effects, especially on how long publisher contracts ran.

The Commission appealed to the Court of Justice of the European Union, and the case is now registered as C-826/24 P, Commission v Google and Alphabet (Google AdSense). On 12 November 2026 Advocate General Juliane Kokott delivered her Opinion in Luxembourg, and it went the Commission's way. She proposed that the judgment under appeal be set aside and the case referred back to the General Court for a fresh judgment.

The underlying business is easy to describe and hard to displace. Google, a subsidiary of Alphabet, has run the AdSense online advertising intermediation platform since 2003. AdSense for Search lets websites with integrated search engines display Google search ads and share the revenue. For many publishers that arrangement was the engine underneath their own search box, which is why regulators looked closely at its terms.

The contracts that drew scrutiny were built on a Google Services Agreement signed by website operators. The model templates used from March 2009 contained three clauses restricting or prohibiting advertising from competing services: an exclusivity clause, a placement clause and a prior authorisation clause.

Key Facts

Reuters reported on November 12, 2026, that Google suffered a setback as the adviser to Europe's top court faulted the lower tribunal's decision to scrap the 1.49 billion euro ($1.7 billion) fine levied seven years earlier. The wire service recorded the Commission's 2019 finding that restrictive clauses stopped rivals placing search ads on publishers' websites, reinforcing Google's dominance in online search advertising from 2006 to 2016.

After complaints, the Commission opened proceedings in July 2016, and Google ceased applying or amended the clauses in September 2016. In a decision dated March 2019 the Commission found that between 2006 and 2016 Google had committed three separate infringements forming a single and continuous infringement, and imposed a fine of almost 1.5 billion euros, partly jointly and severally with Alphabet. The General Court annulled that decision on 18 September 2024 for inadequate examination of the relevant circumstances, in particular the duration of the contractual relationship.

IEU Monitoring reported on November 13, 2026, that Kokott considers the General Court applied excessive requirements when assessing Google's anti competitive practices, and that the case should return to the lower court with a reduction of the fine. The Commission's duty to demonstrate exclusionary abuse requires all relevant circumstances to be examined, but the General Court wrongly inferred that this demands a detailed analysis of every criterion, failure of which alone can annul the decision.

The legal test at the centre of the appeal is the framework known as the Intel criteria, the case law used to judge whether exclusivity arrangements or loyalty rebates by a dominant undertaking violate Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. Digital Watch reported on November 12, 2026, that Kokott found the General Court had faulted the Commission for not examining every contract in granular detail on duration and termination rights, and had thereby imposed excessive legal requirements.

The numbers are substantial on both sides. The AdSense penalty is one of six EU antitrust fines that have cost Google 10.38 billion euros over nearly two decades, and it was the only one a court ever threw out. The Commission asked the Court of Justice to set aside the 2024 judgment in so far as Google and Alphabet dispute that the clauses were capable of restricting competition between 31 March 2009 and 31 December 2015.

Analysis

The Opinion is not a ruling, and it does not restore the fine by itself. The Advocate General's conclusions do not bind the Judges, who are now deliberating and will give judgment at a later date. Reuters reported on November 12, 2026, that the court usually follows the majority of such recommendations and will rule next year, which points to a decision in 2027. Even if the Judges follow Kokott in full, the money does not simply snap back: the file returns to the General Court for a new judgment, and that court has not yet examined several of Google's pleas, including its objections to the amount of the fine.

What this really means is that the September 2024 annulment should be read as a procedural loss for the Commission rather than a durable legal vindication for Google. The General Court did not hold that the clauses were lawful. It held that the Commission had failed to demonstrate the infringements, in particular by not adequately examining the duration of the contractual relationship. Kokott's answer is that the lower court turned one evidentiary gap into a total defeat. She holds that a cumulative assessment of the significant contracts and their durations was sufficient, and that the General Court failed to weigh its duration finding against the other Intel criteria.

The second half of the Opinion is more uncomfortable for the Commission than the headlines suggest. Kokott accepts that the fine should be reduced in any event, because the General Court's findings on the lack of demonstrated exclusionary effects in 2016 were not challenged. That concession admits that a slice of the infringement period was not legally established, and it means any revival of the case would come at a lower amount than the 1.49 billion euros imposed in March 2019.

There is also a pattern worth noticing in the personnel. Kokott wrote the advisory opinions in the Shopping and Android cases, and the court followed her both times: the 2.4 billion euro Shopping fine was confirmed in 2024, and the 4.1 billion euro Android fine was upheld in July and has since been paid into the EU budget. The Next Web reported on November 12, 2026, that the AdSense matter was the only one of Google's EU antitrust penalties a court ever threw out, a description that now looks provisional rather than final.

Why It Matters

For publishers and rival ad intermediaries, the case defines how much evidence Brussels must marshal before it can condemn contract terms that quietly foreclose a market. If the Court of Justice endorses Kokott's reading, enforcers will be able to rely on a cumulative assessment of the significant contracts and their durations instead of a contract by contract audit. That is a lower evidentiary bar, and it applies well beyond search advertising, to any dominant platform that writes the terms on which smaller businesses reach their customers.

For Google and Alphabet, the arithmetic is already settled in one direction. The company has absorbed 10.38 billion euros across six EU antitrust penalties over nearly two decades, and the Android penalty has been paid into the EU budget. The AdSense line item is roughly 1.5 billion euros, and the fine, if reinstated, would be smaller than the original. The precedential cost is the larger exposure, particularly as Google is separately contesting a near 3 billion euro adtech fine.

For the Court of Justice, the appeal is a test of how far a lower court may go in second guessing the Commission's economic reasoning. A ruling that endorses the Opinion would reinforce the deference the Luxembourg courts have shown to the Commission's foreclosure analysis in the Shopping and Android judgments, and it would make clear that a missing piece of reasoning is a defect to be fixed by a fresh judgment rather than a reason to void a decision entirely.

Next Up

The Judges of the Court of Justice are now deliberating, and judgment is expected in 2027. The most likely outcome, if the court follows its adviser as it usually does, is an order setting aside the General Court's 18 September 2024 judgment and remitting the case to that court. The General Court would then work through the pleas it has not yet examined, including Google's arguments on the amount of the fine, with Kokott's view that the 2016 portion of the infringement was not legally established on the record.

What no one should expect is a quick end. A remittal restarts the clock at the lower court, and any fresh judgment could itself be appealed again. The practical question for the Commission is whether it wants to defend a reduced fine on a narrowed infringement period, or to treat the case primarily as a point of principle about the evidentiary standard for exclusionary effects in digital advertising. Google, for its part, has won the only round that has gone its way so far and would now have to win it a second time.