Google’s legal response focused on several arguments, including that the Commission incorrectly judged the company to be dominant in the mobile market (due to the existence of iOS) and that its actions were necessary to prevent the Android ecosystem from fragmenting into many incompatible operating systems. (To which the Commission responds: incompatible or not, encouraging rival mobile OSes is precisely what a competitive market seeks.)
The General Court’s decision today supported the overwhelming bulk of the Commission’s initial allegations. However, the Court determined that Google’s revenue-sharing agreements with manufacturers did not constitute an abuse of Google’s market dominance, and so decreased the punishment by around 5% to €4.1 billion.
