The European Commission on 23 July fined Google €890 million, its heaviest penalty yet under the Digital Markets Act, the bloc's flagship law for policing the power of the largest tech platforms. It is the first time Brussels has used the DMA against Google, and the size of the sanction signals that the EU intends to keep enforcing the rulebook even as Washington threatens to hit back.
The Commission found Google guilty of two distinct violations. It fined the company €460 million for self-preferencing — steering users toward its own services, such as Google Flights and Google Hotels, and pushing rivals' offers down its search results. A second €430 million penalty covers Google Play: the Commission said Google prevented app developers from telling their own customers about cheaper deals available outside its store, a practice that keeps users locked into paying Google's fees.
"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," said Teresa Ribera, the Commission's executive vice-president for competition. The best products, she added, "should succeed because they're better, not because they're owned by the company running the search engine." Google now has 60 days to change its practices or risk further periodic penalties.
Google says complying will hurt users, not help them. It warned it may have to strip out "real-time search features Europeans love" and weaken safety protections on Google Play if forced to overhaul its systems, and said it remains in constructive talks with Brussels to avoid additional penalties. The fine landed a day after its parent, Alphabet, reported earnings and raised its capital-spending forecast to as much as $205 billion this year, a reminder that a €890 million penalty is a rounding error against the scale of Big Tech's balance sheets.
That is precisely the worry for critics who think the punishment is too soft to change behaviour. "Plenty of people would dodge the fare if the fine were cheaper than the ticket," said Alexandra Geese, a German Green MEP who leads on digital policy, arguing that modest sanctions will not deter a company of Google's size from repeating the conduct.
The Google fine follows earlier DMA actions this year against Apple, fined €500 million, and Meta, fined €200 million. But Google has been hit hardest of all: the latest penalty pushes its total EU liabilities to more than €10 billion once older antitrust cases are counted. Taken together, the fines mark Europe's determination to rein in the handful of American "gatekeepers" that dominate search, app distribution and social media — companies no European rival has managed to displace.
The timing is combustible. President Donald Trump's administration has repeatedly accused Brussels of unfairly targeting US technology firms and has threatened "substantial additional tariffs" on European goods in retaliation. US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer warned that the fines "pose a real risk to the continuation of transatlantic stability with respect to trade." A penalty that Brussels frames as routine law enforcement is being read in Washington as an economic provocation — and it arrives just as the two sides try to keep a fragile trade truce intact.
The €890 million is not, on its own, the story. Google can absorb it without blinking, and tech-sovereignty advocates are right that the sum alone will not force a change in behaviour. The real test is the 60-day compliance clock: if Google refuses to redesign search and its app store, the Commission can start stacking daily penalties that eventually do bite. What makes this case bigger than any single fine is the transatlantic backdrop. Brussels is signalling that its digital rulebook applies to American giants no matter who is in the White House, and Washington is signalling it will treat each fine as grounds for tariffs. Europe's effort to discipline Big Tech and its effort to avoid a trade war with its closest ally are now on a collision course — and the next move belongs to both Google's lawyers and Donald Trump.
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