Case T-612/17

Google LLC vs. European

Commission
Google’s search engine offers
two type of search result
1. General Search Engine

Selected according to general criteria and without

the websites to which they link paying google to
appear
2. Specialized search engine
selected according to a specialized logic for the particular type of search carried out. They can
appear alongside general search results on the general results page, alone on a specialized results
page or after links in certain areas of Google’s general results page have been activated.
Note: both the General and Specialized search pages
can contain “natural” results as well as ”ads”. The
display of ads is linked to payment commitments
entered into by advertisers at auctions.
Is there a dominant
undertaking favoring the
display of results from it
specialized search service?
The General Court However, the General Court finds that, by
considers that an favoring its own comparison shopping
undertaking’s dominant service on its general results pages
position alone, even through more favorable display and
one on the scale of positioning, while relegating the results
Google’s, is not a from competing comparison services in
ground of criticism of
the undertaking
those pages by means of ranking
concerned, even if it is algorithms, Google departed from
planning to expand into competition on the merits.
a neighbouring market.
The following are the circumstances that lead to a weakening of
competition on the market

(1) the importance of the traffic generated by Google’s general search

engine for comparison shopping services;

(2) the behavior of users, who typically concentrate on the first few
results;

(3) the large proportion of ‘diverted’ traffic in the traffic of comparison

shopping services and the fact that it cannot be effectively replaced
The General Court also notes that, given the universal vocation of
Google’s general search engine, which is designed to index results
containing any possible content, the promotion on Google’s results pages
of only one type of specialized result, namely its own, involves a certain
form of abnormality. A general search engine is infrastructure that is, in
principle, open, the rationale and value of which lie in its capacity to be
open to results from external (third-party) sources and to display those
sources, which enrich and enhance the credibility of the search engine.
the General Court finds that Google’s differentiated treatment is
based on the origin of the results, that is, whether they come from
its own comparison shopping service or from competing services.
The General Court thus rules that, in reality, Google favors its own
comparison shopping service over competing services, rather
than a better result over another result. The General Court notes
that even if the results from competing comparison shopping
services were more relevant, they could never receive the same
treatment as results from Google’s comparison shopping service in
terms of their positioning or their display.