Now that Google and the Commission are at daggers drawn in Luxembourg over the 27 June decision in Google Search,[1] it seems like high time to make our educated guesses about how the recently disclosed arguments in the tech giant’s September appeal[2] will come into play. Therefore, this post is a sort of an update (or a plug-in) to my recent paper EU Competition Law Needs to Install a Plug-in,[3] which for better or for worse was submitted one day after the Commission’s decision was adopted and it was published five days before we had the first news of Google’s bringing the case before the General Court.
As anticipated, Google’s appeal will revolve around the claim that the theory of damage behind its conduct was that of an essential facilities case, while the Commission found it abusive below the refusal to deal threshold. As a matter of fact, Nicholas Banasevic (head of the unit responsible for the Google case) has made clear that the June decision is ‘a very detailed effects-based decision‘ in a ‘plain and simple leveraging case,’ without there being any need to ‘apply another “label” to it, including abuses such as “refusal to supply” rivals.’[4]
Banasevic’s assertion implies that the Silicon Valley company’s leveraging on its dominance in general search to artificially favour its own products in an adjacent market would suffice to be found abusive, as far as the (actual or potential) anticompetitive effect is supported by a fair deal of evidence. No wonder, Google’s reaction would be trying to bring the discussion to the field of legal standard by pleading that the Commission’s move away from the refusal to supply test constitutes an attempt to lowering the abuse threshold below the essential facilities requirements of indispensability and removal of effective competition.
Against this backdrop, it must be recalled that the long-drawn Google Shopping battle, the first chapter of which was brought to a close by the June decision, touches upon a number of de lege lata and de lege ferenda questions. Indeed, it tables both the debate over the adjustments required by competition law of the European Union to be able to deal with the challenges of the digital environment and the traditional controversy about the limits of competition authorities’ say in dominant companies’ business models.
Continue reading “Google Search. Shopping for an appropriate abuse standard”