The European Commission (EC) has imposed a €24.4 billion fine on Google for abusing its status as a leader in EU e-commerce. The company appealed the decision, this Wednesday, but the General Court of Justice of the European Union refused.

The EC alleges that the tech giant has used its dominance at will to favor its own comparison shopping services over competing comparison shopping services.

Recall that, this fine was imposed on Google in 2017 by the EC, which considered there was a self-beneficial work by the tech company in the EU market of the Google Shopping feature.

At the time, the community executive argued that the best-positioned rivals appeared, on average, on page four of the search engine.

According to the EC Google systematically overlapped its own ads with those of its competitors when consumers did a search. The rationale for this is that most of the company's revenue comes in through ads and the company was looking to strengthen this position.

In its appeal, Google has failed to prove "efficiency gains linked to that practice that would counteract its negative effects on competition". Therefore, the body rejects "Google's argument that competition on the market for comparison shopping services remains strong due to the presence of commercial platforms on that market."

In total, Brussels has so far imposed three fines on Google for abuse of a dominant position: in June 2017 (€2.42 billion); in July 2018 (€4.34 billion); and, in March 2019 (€1.49 billion).