The European Commission has hit Google with two fines totaling $1 billion for breaking digital antitrust regulations. What egregious sin did the tech giant commit to warrant such hefty fees? Setting up the Google search engine and Google Play Store to encourage consumers to purchase Google’s services, which the European Commission says violates the Digital Markets Act (DMA).
The Commission alleges that Google unfairly promoted its own shopping, hotel, transport, and sports services in search results while limiting other app developers’ ability to advertise and complete purchases outside Google Play. Google now must take steps to “treat third-party services that feature on Google’s search results in a fair and non-discriminatory manner” and allow app developers to distribute their apps via the Google Play Store “both technically and contractually, to freely communicate, promote offers and conclude contracts with users not only within but also outside the Google Play app store.”
“Google has fallen short of effective compliance with the Digital Markets Act, and today we have taken decisive yet balanced enforcement action sanctioning these breaches,” Teresa Ribera, executive vice president for Clean, Just and Competitive Transition, said in the European Commission’s press release.
The DMA, which became applicable in May 2023, intends to “make the markets in the digital sector fairer and more contestable.” It tries to do so by requiring “large digital platforms providing so called core platform services, such as online search engines, app stores, messenger services,” to comply with a comprehensive list of regulations. These include forcing these firms to allow users to access the data they generate and prohibiting them from favoring their own product (which Google was fined for). The DMA was written with 19 companies in mind, of which 16 are American.
“The best products should succeed because they’re better, not because they’re owned by the company running the search engine,” Ribera added. “And European consumers have a right to be told by app developers where to sign up to the best offers, even when the app store owner does not get a cut. This is the promise of the DMA, protecting fairness, choice and innovation in digital markets for the benefit of all European citizens.”
This is the latest fine in the European Union’s decades-long clampdown on American Big Tech. Last year, the E.U. fined Apple 500 million euros (about $569 million today) and Meta 200 million euros (about $227 million today) under the same antitrust law. Google has borne the brunt of DMA enforcement, having recently lost an appeal over a record $4.5 billion antitrust fine for allegedly thwarting competition through Android’s dominance. The latest penalties bring the value of European Commission fines against Google to almost $12 billion over nearly two decades, according to Reuters.
While the fines are bad news for Google, they are also bad news for consumers worldwide, who may soon feel the effects of tariffs imposed by the United States.
President Donald Trump has previously threatened tariffs and other retaliatory measures in response to European regulations and fines, especially for those that his administration considers discriminatory toward American companies. A 2025 White House memorandum states that if a foreign government “imposes a fine, penalty, tax, or other burden” that is “discriminatory” or “disproportionate,” the Trump administration “will act, imposing tariffs and taking such other responsive actions necessary to mitigate the harm to the United States and to repair any resulting imbalance.”
The imposition of retaliatory tariffs would hurt American consumers too, and would do little to dissuade the regulatory zealots in Brussels from going after American tech companies for operating their companies as they see fit.
The question of why the European Commission consistently punishes tech companies speaks to the nature of Europe’s adversarial attitude toward Big Tech. “Whether offline or online, fear, and greed, lead big and powerful companies to want more power,” Margrethe Vestager, then the European Commission’s competition chief, declared in 2024. She accused large digital platforms of becoming “the player and the referee” and turning the online economy into “the realm of the big few.”
This tech-hostile attitude was seen in the most recent round of fines against Google. It is no wonder that successful and innovative tech companies choose not to base themselves in Europe.
