Google has not succeeded in appealing an $854,000 (€730,000) penalty issued to it by an Italian judge.
The judge found the company guilty regarding YouTube’s display of advertisements for unauthorized gambling services.
The verdict comes from a case that began in 2022, when an administrative court in Italy fined Google for the presence of an advertisement of unregulated gambling operators on YouTube. The company claimed that it was not responsible for the content posted by outside authors on the platform.
However, the court decided that the company has to be held liable in cases when it has a commercial partnership with the author of the content.
According to the ruling, companies cannot be protected from liability if they provide services as neutral intermediaries.
The judges explained that the company is not entitled to such protection in cases when Google examines the page of an author of the posted video-content, which includes the channel of the author and most viewed videos as well as additional information about them.
This ruling comes as the company is planning to launch stricter policies for gambling-related advertisements on 14 September 2026.