The European Union's top court is due to rule on Thursday on a more than €4 billion ($4.56 billion) antitrust fine imposed on Google for allegedly abusing the dominant position of its Android operating system.
The European Commission originally fined the US tech giant €4.34 billion in 2018. The EU's General Court, the lower chamber, later reduced the penalty to €4.125 billion in 2022.
Google appealed the 2022 ruling, prompting the EU Court of Justice to deal with the case.
In 2018, the commission, acting as the EU's competition watchdog, accused Google and its parent company Alphabet of having violated EU competition rules to "cement its dominant position in general internet search" on Android mobile devices.
The commission argued Google has illegally reinforced its dominance by offering Google Search to mobile phone manufacturers only as a bundle with other Google apps, paying them for pre-installing Google Search as the only search app, and obstructing the development of competing apps.
The case is one of several antitrust battles between the European Commission and Google over its market power.
In 2021, Google lost a trial against a €2.4 billion competition fine for abusing its market dominance by promoting its own shopping services and appealed the ruling.
