An adviser to Europe’s top court has challenged the decision that erased Google’s €1.49 billion AdSense fine. The disputed publisher restrictions disappeared in 2016. The fight over the 2019 fine is demonstrating exceptional customer retention.

The European Commission found that Google used contract clauses to keep rival search ads off publishers’ websites, reinforcing its dominance. That is a rather specific version of an open marketplace: everyone may compete, subject to the condition that the contract prevents some of them from appearing.

The Commission fined Google in 2019. The General Court annulled that decision in 2024. On Thursday, Advocate General Kokott faulted the lower court’s demanding approach to assessing the duration of the conduct and its treatment of dominance. Reuters reports that the Court of Justice is expected to decide next year.

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Next year. The clauses have been gone since 2016, and accountability is still checking the departure lounge.

This is an advisory opinion, not a final ruling reinstating the fine. The court usually follows these recommendations, but it makes its own decision. The old restrictions aren’t newly imposed, either. We are watching the legal afterlife of a publisher contract, not discovering that Google secretly stapled it back together this morning.

Appeals matter. Courts should check regulators’ work. But there is something spectacular about an advertising business meeting a system where the enforcement timeline can acquire a historical period.

The publishers’ old contracts tried to keep rivals out. The litigation has done a remarkable job of keeping everyone else waiting.