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The European Commission announced a €890 million fine against Google on Thursday over alleged self-preferencing practices and unfair treatment of app developers, just as the Trump administration prepares a fresh round of trade duties.
The fine caps an investigation the Commission launched in March 2024 under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), a law setting out a list of dos and don’ts for large tech companies that dominate key digital markets.
The flagship element of the case, leading to a fine worth €460 million, concerns Google’s search engine allegedly giving systematic preferential treatment to its own services — Google Shopping, Google Hotels, Google Flights — while downgrading competitors in search results.
Self-preferencing first took centre stage as a legal theory in the landmark Google Shopping antitrust case, confirmed by the EU Court of Justice in 2024, more than a decade after the investigation was formally opened in 2010.
The DMA later codified the concept, with the explicit aim of speeding up enforcement and stripping out many of the evidential hurdles required under traditional antitrust law.
The second strand of the case, amounting to the remaining €430 million, concerns accusations from app developers that Google prevents them from telling consumers how to leave its ecosystem, for instance by promoting cheaper offers available outside its app store or flagging alternative payment systems.
Decision’s implications
Beyond the monetary sanction — and arguably more consequential for Google — the Commission has ordered the company to end its non-compliance: treating third-party services without discrimination and letting app developers communicate freely with users.
Google must comply with the Commission’s decision within 60 days or face periodic penalty payments of up to 5% of its worldwide turnover.
Google, for its part, argues its services are designed to optimise the user experience, and that changing its search results or app store policies would harm the European digital ecosystem.
“This isn’t fair competition; it’s product degradation driven by a small group of self-serving complainants, with European businesses and consumers taking the hit. Regulation should improve products, not make them worse,” said Google President of Global Affairs Kent Walker.
Google has already begun testing changes to its search service and app store. The Commission says it will continue to monitor their implementation, and considers some of them significant progress towards compliance.
Google did not confirm whether it intends to appeal the decision.
The conclusion of the probe is, on paper, the product of a largely bureaucratic assessment of whether the tech giant breached the bloc’s prescriptive rules for fairer, more contestable digital markets. But it risks becoming another point of contention in transatlantic tensions.
US trade tensions
A major fine against an American corporation is set to become another flashpoint with Washington. The Trump administration has repeatedly made clear it views EU digital rules as a trade “irritant,” at times equating such fines with commercial tariffs.
A year ago, Brussels and Washington struck a trade deal known as the Turnberry agreement to resolve their trade dispute, under which the EU agreed to remove duties on most US industrial products and accept a 15% US tariff on its own exports.
The Trump administration was forced to adopt new tariffs on a different legal basis after the US Supreme Court ruled the duties it had imposed in 2025 illegal.
That new regime is set to expire this week, and the White House is weighing additional duties expected to target forced labour and overcapacity, following a Section 301 investigation touching on German drug pricing.
EU-US trade tensions have already shaped how Brussels decided to sanction American tech giants in the past. Last September, a fine against Google over its digital advertising business was shelved amid pressure from within the Commission and from the US government.
Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič emerged as the main internal opponent of issuing sensitive sanctions before a deal with Washington was finalised. After that internal rift became public, the Commission went ahead with the fine — but the episode showed how susceptible the EU’s investigations were to outside political pressure.
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