An initial appeal by the search firm was knocked back by the General Court of the European Union in November last year. The fine was levied on Google for alleged abuse of its search engine dominance to give an illegal advantage to its own comparison shopping service.

In a statement, a Google spokesperson told Reuters: "After careful consideration, we have decided to appeal the General Court’s decision because we feel there are areas that require legal clarification from the European Court of Justice.

"Irrespective of the appeal, we continue to invest in our remedy, which has been working successfully for several years, and will continue to work constructively with the European Commission."

In dismissing the appeal in November last year, the court said by "favouring its own comparison shopping service on its general results pages through more favourable display and positioning, while relegating the results from competing comparison services in those pages by means of ranking algorithms, Google departed from competition on the merits".

The Court also said "the promotion on Google’s results pages of only one type of specialised result, namely its own, involves a certain form of abnormality".

The 13 countries in question are Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Norway.

Apart from the €2.42 billion fine, Google also faces a €4.34 billion (US$4.9 billion, A$6.8 billion) EU fine imposed on it in 2018 for allegedly breaching anti-trust rules relevant to Android, claiming the authorities had turned a blind eye to Apple, its sole rival in the smartphone space.

A third fine of €1.49 billion (US$1.7 billion, A$2.3 billion) has been imposed by the EU for alleged abusive practices by Google in online advertising.