Google Was Fined $1 Billion for Discriminating Against Competing Services in the EU
This is the first penalty imposed on the company under EU legislation regulating tech giants
Google Fined $1 Billion for Restricting Competition in the EU / Photo: NorthSky Films / Shutterstock
The European Commission fined Google €890 million ($1 billion), stating that the company gives its own services an anti-competitive advantage.
Google unfairly prioritized its own search results and prevented app developers from redirecting users to resources outside its Play Store, the European Commission said. The company was fined €460 million for violations related to search and an additional €430 million for violations related to the Play Store.
“Google has failed to ensure effective compliance with the Digital Markets Act, and today we have taken decisive yet balanced enforcement action by imposing fines for these violations. The best products should win because they are better, not because they belong to the company that owns the search engine,” said Teresa Ribera, the European Commission’s Commissioner for Competition.
The European Commission has given the American tech giant 60 days to bring its operations into compliance with the Digital Markets Act. Otherwise, the company faces new periodic fines.
“This implementation of the Digital Markets Act continues to disrupt the products people use every day,” Bloomberg quotes Google’s President of Global Affairs, Kent Walker, as saying. “To comply with the requirements, we have to remove the real-time search features that Europeans love so much—such as instant price comparisons and booking hotels, flights, and restaurants—and dismantle security protections on Google Play.”
Shares of Google's parent company, Alphabet, fell nearly 5% in premarket trading on July 23. Year-to-date, they are up 9%.
Context
The new sanctions against Google followed fines of €500 million and €200 million, imposed on Apple and Meta Platforms, respectively, under the EU’s Digital Markets Act—a law that establishes a strict framework to curb the dominance of the largest tech companies, according to Bloomberg.
These rulings have brought the total amount of the European Union's claims against Google to over €10 billion, which significantly exceeds the fines imposed on Apple, Meta, and Microsoft, the agency notes.
This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor
