Google hit with $1 billion fine for breaking digital antitrust rules

The European Union has fined Google 890 million euros ($1 billion) on Thursday for pushing consumers toward its own apps and services, the biggest penalty a company has received under the bloc’s Digital Markets Act.

App developers, publishers and Google’s rivals have long argued that the company’s search and Android platforms box them out of consumers.

Regulators find Google guilty

Google was said to have favored its own shopping, travel and translation results in search while demoting competitors further down the page. The European Commission also claimed the tech giant blocked Android developers from pointing customers to cheaper payment options outside the Google Play Store.

Teresa Ribera, the Commission’s executive vice president who oversees competition policy, said the ruling revolved around consumer protection. “The best products should succeed because they’re better, not because they’re owned by the company running the search engine,” Ribera stated. She added that the goal was to preserve “fairness, choice and innovation.”

Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier, in an even blunter assessment, said the top companies remain obligated to keep the playing field level so users and shoppers can find cheaper deals in the market.

$1 billion fine and Digital Markets Act

The 890 million euro figure is still modest when compared against Google’s balance sheet, amounting to 0.22 percent of the company’s global turnover. The Digital Markets Act (DMA) lets Brussels go as high as 10 percent of a company’s turnover as a penalty for breaches.

Regardless of the percentage taken, the amount Google was fined is still higher than all previous DMA penalties. The EU hit Meta with 200 million euros ($228 million) and Apple with 500 million euros ($570 million) in 2025, with the law itself only coming into effect in 2024. The probe into Google started the same year the DMA was launched.

Google has 60 days to change its conduct or face escalating penalties, which could reach 5 percent of its worldwide annual revenue. The threatened escalation is seen as “periodic penalty payments” that will continue to accrue till the company complies.

Google claims changes will affect the product

Kent Walker, Google’s head of global affairs, argued that the required changes would force the company to remove “real-time Search features Europeans love.” He pointed to instant hotel, flight and restaurant pricing, and said these changes could “dismantle safety protections on Google Play.”

The company also said that mandated changes could make search and Android less useful for European users.

The recent fine from the EU adds to a list of penalties that have cost Google more than 10 billion euros (over $11 billion) in EU fines since 2017. The company recently lost an appeal against a $4.5 billion antitrust fine tied to its Android dominance, and a separate 2.95 billion euro ($3.4 billion) penalty was also handed to the tech giant last September under different rules.

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