LUXEMBOURG, Nov 10 (Reuters) – Europe’s second top court on Wednesday upheld an EU antitrust ruling and 2.42 billion euros ($2.8 billion) fine against Alphabet unit Google, the first of a trio of cases that mark competition chief Margrethe Vestager’s tough line against U.S.tech giants.

“The General Court largely dismisses Google’s action against the decision of the Commission finding that Google abused its dominant position by favouring its own comparison shopping service over competing comparison shopping services,” the Court said.

Vestager sanctioned the world’s most popular internet search engine in 2017 for favouring its own price-comparison shopping service to give it an unfair advantage against smaller European rivals.

The case is T-612/17 Google and bulk index elasticsearch java Alphabet v Commission (Google Shopping).

($1 = 0.8648 euros) (Reporting by Francois Aulner, bulk index error writing by Foo Yun Chee)