The European Union on Thursday imposed a total of 890 million euros in fines on Google for violations of competition in online search and within the Google Play application store, at the risk of a new crisis with Washington.
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This overall amount represents the highest sanction imposed by Brussels against a company under the European Digital Markets Regulation (DMA), a powerful European law aimed at cracking down on abuses of dominant position by tech giants.
In detail, Google was fined 460 million euros for favoring its own services (such as price, flight or hotel comparison sites) in the results of its search engine, Google Search.
Added to this is a second fine of 430 million euros, for preventing developers using its application store, the Play Store, from directing customers to other virtual points of sale.
This practice, called “anti-steering”, is strictly prohibited by the DMA.
“This is a very important decision,” said Commission Vice-President for Digital, Henna Virkkunen, stressing that it aimed to “ensure a level playing field” for all online businesses.
The American technology giant, for its part, criticized this decision, which it believes will lead to a deterioration of services that are popular with Internet users.
“To comply, we are forced to remove real-time search features that Europeans love, such as instant pricing and direct availability of hotels, flights and restaurants, and to dismantle security protections on Google Play,” protested Kent Walker, president of Google’s global affairs, in a statement sent to AFP.
“Pretext for retaliation”
This new sanction, even if it only represents 0.22% of Google’s global turnover, risks fueling Washington’s anger against European digital regulation, accused by the Trump administration of targeting American champions of the sector.
In this regard, 25 Republican parliamentarians wrote to the American president this week to ask for retaliation against the European Union if it continued to exercise “discriminatory laws, policies or practices” against American companies.
“We have a duty to ensure that the laws adopted by our sovereign institutions are fully applied and respected,” insisted Teresa Ribera, responsible for Competition within the Commission.
This fine “must not serve as a pretext for retaliation by the United States”, for his part warned German MEP Bernd Lange (S&D, left), affirming that “what is prohibited offline must also be prohibited online”.
Google, which has already proposed or introduced measures to try to comply with the DMA, will have to comply with this decision within 60 days, under penalty of additional fines.
“It’s about time”
“It was high time for the Commission to apply the law,” said the European consumer organization BEUC, judging that “Google had limited consumer choices and narrowed competition.”
“These fines are pocket money for Google,” mocked Max von Thun, director of the NGO Open Markets Institute, demanding much stricter application of the DMA.
Previously, Brussels had sanctioned Apple and Meta under the DMA, but for lower amounts (500 and 200 million euros respectively).
This is a new setback for Google, which is seeing unfavorable decisions accumulate in Europe.
Last week, Brussels required it to open its Android operating system to artificial intelligence services competing with its Gemini assistant and to share data collected by Google Search with its rivals.
The Commission also imposed a fine of 2.95 billion euros on it last September for abuse of a dominant position in online advertising.
