Alphabet unit Google has lost a legal case in Europe to avoid paying a substantial fine worth $854,250 tied to the company’s alleged advertising of illegal gambling on YouTube, its video-sharing platform.
The case dates back four years; it has taken action from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) to be resolved, after Google challenged the 2022 ruling of an Italian administrative court.
Fast forward to 2026, and the company has officially lost its case in the Luxembourg-based court. The company insisted that it was protected from legal ramifications against itself arising from content disputes uploaded by content creators, but this argument fell flat.
The company cited this exemption specifically, but failed to convince the court, which argued that because of a commercial partnership between the content creator and YouTube, the position was not tenable:
“Google may be held liable for the YouTube videos of a content creator with whom it has a commercial partnership.”
CJEU
The rules around exemption from liability only applied in those cases where Google’s platforms acted as intermediary service providers, limiting themselves to strictly technical support.
“That is not the case where an operator reviews, for the purpose of concluding a commercial partnership contract, the main theme of a video channel, that channel’s most viewed videos or newest videos and the associated metadata,” the court further noted.