Google’s 2024 courtroom victory in Europe may not be as lasting as the company had hoped.
On November 12, 2026, Advocate General Juliane Kokott advised the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) that a lower court had erred in overturning a €1.49 billion ($1.7 billion) antitrust fine against the search giant. Her opinion is non-binding, but it puts a penalty many had considered dead back in play.
What the adviser actually said
The case, formally Case C-826/24 P., concerns Google’s AdSense business and a fine imposed by the European Commission in March 2019.
In September 2024, the EU General Court annulled the fine, finding that the Commission’s assessment of Google’s conduct was inadequate.
The Commission, the bloc’s competition enforcer, challenged that outcome. It appealed to the CJEU, the Luxembourg-based court at the top of the EU’s judicial system.
Kokott says the General Court was wrong. She recommended that the CJEU overturn the annulment and send the case back for further review.
That distinction matters: her recommendation would not automatically reinstate the fine. It reopens the issue but does not resolve it.
She also suggested that any fine upheld should be lower, citing findings about Google’s conduct in 2016, when the company removed the disputed contract clauses.
The original complaint: who can sell ads, and where
The Commission’s 2019 decision described restrictive terms in Google’s contracts with publishers. The terms allegedly prevented rival ad providers from placing search ads on publishers’ websites. The Commission concluded that this strengthened Google’s already dominant position in online search advertising.
Google removed the clauses in 2016. Under Kokott’s recommendation, that timing now matters to the size of any penalty.
Why this case stands apart
The AdSense case is one of six antitrust actions the EU has brought against Google. Over nearly two decades, the company has been fined a combined €10.38 billion across those cases.
Until now, AdSense stood apart: it was the only case in that group in which a fine had been annulled.
The timeline is also notable. The fine was imposed in March 2019, and the CJEU is expected to issue a final decision in 2027.
What the opinion could mean for Google and EU regulators
The CJEU typically follows its advocate general’s conclusions, making Kokott’s opinion a reasonable indication of where the court may land.
For the Commission, the opinion is a partial vindication. Its central argument—that the General Court misjudged the case—has received support at the highest level of review.
But Kokott’s proposed path does not simply reinstate the fine. Sending the case back to the lower court would mean further litigation, and her recommendation to reduce the fine means the final amount could be below €1.49 billion.
The next development to watch is the CJEU’s ruling, expected in 2027. Based on Kokott’s opinion, three outcomes appear plausible: the court could reject the annulment and send the case back, as she proposed; it could take its own approach to the fine’s size; or it could reject her view and leave the 2024 annulment in place.
