By Foo Yun Chee

BRUSSELS (Reuters), – Alphabet’s (NASDAQ: Google) unit Monday demanded that Europe’s second-highest Court dismiss a fine of 1.49 Billion Euro ($1.6 Billion) imposed by EU antitrust regulators, three years back for preventing rivals from online search advertising.

This is just one of the three cases that have led to 8.25 Billion Euro in European Union antitrust penalties on Google, the most used internet search engine.

In its 2019 decision, the European Commission stated that Google had misused its power to prevent websites from using other brokers than AdSense which provides search ads. According to the Commission, these illegal acts occurred between 2006 and 2016.

Google challenged the EU decision in Luxembourg’s General Court. A hearing of three days will begin Monday and the company will present its case.

Google insisted that the EU Competition Enforcementr’s assessment about Google’s dominance was wrong and that the Commission’s determination that search ads and other ads are not competitive were incorrect.

The Commission was also criticized for claiming that the exclusive, premium placement, and minimal Google ads clauses of the company were abusive.

Google was unable to win its antitrust case against the 2.42-billion euro antitrust ruling last year. It had used its price comparison shopping site to unfairly advantage smaller European competitors.

T-334/19 refers to AdSense.

($1 = 0.9505 euros)