EU fines Google €890 million in first penalties against it under the Digital Markets Act

Two decisions adopted by the European Commission on 23 July 2026 cost Google €890 million and, more importantly for the company, ordered it to change how its search engine and its app store work in the European Union. They were the first fines imposed on Google under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), the EU law that sets special obligations for the largest online platforms.

What the Commission decided

The first decision, carrying a fine of €460 million, concerns Google Search. Under the DMA, companies designated as “gatekeepers” may not rank their own services more favourably than those of competitors. The Commission found that Google gave preferential treatment to its own shopping, hotel, transport and sports results, showing them at the top of the page or with enhanced visuals and filters that comparable third-party services did not receive.

The second decision, with a fine of €430 million, concerns Google Play, the app store on Android phones. The law says developers who distribute apps through a gatekeeper’s store must be able to tell customers, free of charge, about cheaper offers elsewhere and direct them there, a practice known as steering. The Commission found that Google prevented developers from freely promoting offers and concluding contracts through channels of their choice, including rival app stores. Google is allowed to charge a fee for helping a developer acquire a new customer, the Commission said, but the level of its steering-related fees and the length of time they were charged went beyond what the law permits.

Google was ordered to end both practices within 60 days. If it did not, the Commission said, it risked periodic penalty payments of up to 5% of its worldwide turnover, a ceiling the law calculates on a daily-average basis.

How the case got here

The DMA does not require regulators to prove, case by case, that a dominant company has harmed competition, as traditional antitrust law does. Instead it lists things gatekeepers must and must not do. Google was designated a gatekeeper for its search engine in September 2023. The Commission opened its investigations into self-preferencing and steering on 25 March 2024 and sent Google its preliminary findings on 19 March 2025.

The fines are well below the legal maximum of 10% of global annual revenue. The Commission said the amounts reflected the gravity and duration of the breaches. It also acknowledged that Google had already started to change course: the company had proposed and begun testing new search layouts for shopping, hotels and flights, which the Commission called “substantial progress towards compliance”, and had rolled out changes to its Play Store steering terms, which were still being assessed.

According to Reuters, these were Google’s fifth and sixth EU fines for anti-competitive practices, bringing its total penalties in the bloc to €10.38 billion over nearly two decades. The earlier DMA fines were €500 million for Apple and €200 million for Meta in April 2025.

What each side said

“Google has fallen short of effective compliance with the Digital Markets Act,” Teresa Ribera, the Commission’s executive vice-president responsible for competition, said in the announcement. Henna Virkkunen, the executive vice-president for technology policy, said the Commission “will not hesitate to use our tools to safeguard business and innovation opportunities opened up by the DMA.”

Google rejected the findings. “This isn’t fair competition; it’s product degradation driven by a small group of self-serving complainants,” Kent Walker, the company’s president of global affairs, said, according to Reuters. He argued that complying would mean removing real-time search features such as instant prices and hotel, flight and restaurant availability, and weakening safety protections on Google Play. “Regulation should improve products, not make them worse,” he said. Google said it might challenge the decisions in court.

The fines landed during a trade dispute. Reuters reported that the administration of US President Donald Trump had threatened tariffs in retaliation for European enforcement against American technology companies. Asked about that pressure, Ribera said: “Our duty and obligation is to comply with the laws, that our laws are fully respected.”

The week before: Android and search data

The fines were the second major DMA step against Google in eight days. On 16 July the Commission issued two sets of binding instructions, known as specification decisions, which are not penalties but spell out how a gatekeeper must comply.

One requires Google to give rival artificial intelligence assistants access to Android features that had been reserved for its own Gemini assistant, so that users could summon a different assistant by voice and have it carry out tasks inside apps. The Commission said 60% of EU users have an Android device. The other requires Google to share anonymised search data, of a kind that only Google collects at scale, with competing search engines, a group the Commission said includes AI chatbots that offer search. The decision sets a pricing formula and lets Google assess whether sharing with a particular recipient poses serious security or data protection risks.

What remains open

Two questions were left unresolved in July. The first is artificial intelligence in search itself: the Commission said it would continue talks on how the principles of the search decision apply to AI Overviews and AI Mode, the features in which Google answers queries directly. The second is whether Google’s redesigns will be judged sufficient once the 60-day period has run, or whether daily penalties follow. Reuters reported in July that, given what the Commission called a constructive dialogue, such penalties appeared unlikely.