Google just lost its appeal against a record-breaking $2.8 billion antitrust fine in the EU

• Google has lost a court fight against a $2.8 billion fine from Europe's competition regulator.
• The EU fined the tech giant in 2017 over alleged anticompetitive practices.

Google has lost its appeal against a $2.8 billion antitrust fine issued against it by the EU's competition regulator in 2017.

The tech giant had sought to combat the European Commission's findings that it had abused its dominant position and promoted its own shopping service in its search results over those of its competitors.

The EU has fined the tech giant over claims of anticompetitive behavior - involving search, shopping, and Android - three times in three years: first for $2.8 billion in 2017, again for $5 billion in 2018, and once more for $1.7 billion in 2019.

In the first case, the European Commission accused the California-based technology giant of abusing its dominant position and promoting its own shopping service in its search results over those of its competitors.

The company's first attempt to overturn the Commission's fine officially failed on Wednesday morning.

In a statement published on Wednesday morning, the EU's General Court confirmed the find amount and said Google had favored "its own comparison shopping service on its general results pages through more favorable display and positioning."

"While relegating the results from competing comparison services in those pages by means of ranking algorithms, Google departed from competition on the merits," the court said.

"The General Court largely dismisses Google's action against the decision of the Commission finding that Google abused its dominant position by favouring its own comparison shopping service over competing comparison shopping services," it added.

The court did, however, say the Commission didn't prove Google's conduct had harmed the market for general search.

The decision marks a major win for EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager, whose reputation as the scourge of Silicon Valley startups has been bolstered by her growing confidence in taking on industry giants like Amazon, Apple, and Facebook.

A Google spokesperson told Insider: "Shopping ads have always helped people find the products they are looking for quickly and easily, and helped merchants to reach potential customers.

"This judgement relates to a very specific set of facts and while we will review it closely, we made changes back in 2017 to comply with the European Commission's decision."

They added: "Our approach has worked successfully for more than three years, generating billions of clicks for more than 700 comparison shopping services."

Google has the right to appeal the latest decision at the EU Court of Justice, the bloc's highest court - meaning it may not cough up the penalty just yet.