An adviser to the EU’s top court said on 12 November that the General Court erred when it annulled the European Commission’s €1.49 billion fine on Google over its AdSense for Search contracts, as Reuters reported, putting the fine at $1.7 billion. Advocate General Juliane Kokott proposed that the 2024 judgment be set aside and the case be sent back to the General Court, according to the Court of Justice’s press release.
By our arithmetic, of the three Commission fines on Google from 2017 to 2019 that have reached the EU courts, €6.5 billion of €8.25 billion now stands, or 79%. The AdSense fine is the part that was struck out, and by our count 2,794 days have passed since the Commission imposed it.
Business Pill · Distribution Advantage
An evergreen Business Engineer explainer on distribution advantage: why reach decides which products get tried. It teaches the general idea only and does not discuss the AdSense case.
The key insight: Advocate General Kokott told the Court of Justice on 12 November that the General Court erred in annulling the Commission’s €1.49 billion AdSense fine on Google, and proposed sending the case back for a fresh judgment, according to the Court’s press release. By our arithmetic, EU courts have kept €6.545 billion of the €8.25 billion the Commission fined Google from 2017 to 2019, or 79%; AdSense is the missing part.
The Court of Justice has set criteria, known as the Intel criteria, for showing that contracts imposed by a dominant company shut out rivals, and they include how long the contracts last, the press release says. In Kokott’s view, the General Court demanded too much on that one point: it “imposed excessive requirements as to the scope of the examination of the criterion of duration” and did not weigh it against the other criteria.
It is enough, in principle, to consider all the contracts that matter for competition on the market together, with their durations, the release says. Kokott found that the Commission did this, carrying out an overall assessment and in some cases relying on average values. Since the General Court has not yet examined some of Google’s pleas, including its objections to the amount of the fine, she proposes that the case go back to it.
The fine “should be reduced” in any event, according to the release, because the General Court’s finding that exclusionary effects were not shown for 2016 was not challenged by the Commission. The opinion does not bind the Court of Justice, whose judges are now beginning their deliberations; judgment will be given at a later date.
The European Commission’s antitrust fines on Google from 2017 to 2019 as imposed and as they stand after EU court rulings: Shopping upheld by the Court of Justice (10 September 2024), Android cut by the General Court and upheld (2 July 2026), AdSense annulled by the General Court (18 September 2024), which Advocate General Kokott on 12 November 2026 proposed to set aside. Totals are our arithmetic; the 2.95 billion euro adtech fine of September 2025 is not shown.
What Google’s Contracts Did
Through AdSense for Search, Google placed search ads from Google Search on websites with their own search box and shared the revenue with the site owners, under individually negotiated Google Services Agreements. From March 2009, the model templates contained clauses that restricted or banned ads from competing services, the Court’s release says. The Commission targeted three clauses: exclusivity, minimum placement of Google ads, and Google’s prior approval before any change to the display of search ads.
Google held a market share above 70% in online search advertising intermediation in the European Economic Area from 2006 to 2016, the Commission said in March 2019. Google stopped applying or amended the clauses in September 2016, two months after the Commission opened proceedings. Margrethe Vestager, then competition commissioner, said at the time that the “misconduct lasted over 10 years and denied other companies the possibility to compete on the merits and to innovate”.
The General Court annulled the decision on 18 September 2024, finding that the Commission had not examined the relevant circumstances well enough, in particular the duration of the contracts. We set out how much of Google’s revenue comes from search in Google’s search revenue.
Our Numbers
By our arithmetic, the Commission’s four antitrust fines on Google add up to €11.2 billion: €2.42 billion for Google Shopping in 2017, almost €4.343 billion for Android in 2018, €1.49 billion for AdSense in 2019 and €2.95 billion for adtech in September 2025. The AdSense fine is about 13% of that total.
The Court of Justice upheld the Shopping fine on 10 September 2024. For Android, the General Court cut the fine to €4.125 billion and the Court of Justice confirmed it on 2 July 2026, 378 days after Kokott, also the Advocate General in that case, proposed dismissing Google’s appeal. That leaves €6.545 billion standing out of €8.25 billion imposed across the three older cases, by our arithmetic.
At Reuters’ $1.7 billion, the AdSense fine equals about 5.9 days of Alphabet’s net income in the third quarter of 2026, which was $26.468 billion according to its 10-Q, by our arithmetic over a 92-day quarter. The case took 2,009 days from the Commission decision to the General Court’s judgment and 785 days from that judgment to the opinion.
The Structural Read
As we read the release, the opinion turns on method rather than on the clauses themselves. The General Court had already accepted that the contracts were, in principle, capable of shutting out rivals, the release says; it annulled the fine because it wanted more on how long the contracts lasted. Kokott’s view is that an overall assessment of all the relevant contracts is enough, which is a question about how much proof the Commission must bring in exclusivity cases.
Advocate General Kokott, as summarised by the Court of Justice, press release 164/26
“The General Court erred in finding that the Commission had failed to demonstrate any exclusionary effects of Google’s contractual practices in connection with its online advertising intermediation platform AdSense”
Three Implications
FOR GOOGLE AND ALPHABET The €1.49 billion fine, which the General Court annulled in 2024, is back in question; Kokott says the General Court must still address Google’s objections to the amount, and that the fine should be reduced for 2016 in any event.
FOR THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION If the Court of Justice follows the opinion, the Commission’s overall-assessment method for exclusivity contracts would stand; the Court followed Kokott’s proposal in the Android appeal 378 days after her opinion, by our count.
FOR PUBLISHERS AND RIVAL AD NETWORKS The clauses at issue limited competing search ads on publishers’ sites from 2006 to 2016, when Google held more than 70% of the market, according to the Commission.
Days between steps in the AdSense case, from the Court of Justice press releases 164/26, 72/25 and 93/26 and the Commission release of 20 March 2019; day counts are our arithmetic.
What Is Not Established
The opinion is a proposal, not a ruling, and the Court of Justice may decide differently. If the case goes back to the General Court, that court would still have to rule on Google’s remaining pleas and on the amount of the fine. The press release does not say by how much the 2016 finding would reduce the fine.
The Court’s release and the Reuters report do not carry comment from Google or the Commission, and neither was contacted for this piece. The dollar figure is Reuters’ conversion.
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Advocate General Kokott told the Court of Justice that the General Court was wrong to annul Google’s €1.49 billion AdSense fine and proposed sending the case back, the Court’s release says. By our arithmetic, EU courts have so far kept €6.5 billion of the €8.25 billion in fines the Commission imposed on Google from 2017 to 2019.
A note on sourcing. The opinion’s content comes from the Court of Justice’s press release No 164/26 of 12 November 2026, which we read in full; the full opinion was not read for this piece. Fine amounts and dates come from the Court’s press releases 135/24, 72/25 and 93/26 and the Commission’s releases of 2017, 2019 and 2025. The dollar figure is Reuters’ conversion, and Alphabet’s net income comes from its third-quarter 10-Q.
The totals, shares, day counts and the profit comparison are our arithmetic. Google and the European Commission were not contacted for this piece.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
