Europe hits Google with $1 billion fine for boxing-out rivals
Europe has hit Google with €890 million ($1 billion) fine for illegally abusing its search engine "gatekeeper" dominance against competition, the EU Commission said in
Europe has hit Google with €890 million ($1 billion) fine for illegally abusing its search engine "gatekeeper" dominance against competition, the EU Commission said in a press release. The move is bound to stoke trade tensions between Europe and the United States after the Trump administration threatened tit-for-tat retaliation against what it called the EU's "unfair" trade policies. The EU Commission (EC) said Google used its dominant search engine position to unfairly boost its own shopping, travel, games and other services. It did so by displaying its own services up top while pushing rivals farther down in search results, the regulators added. "Under the DMA [Digital Markets Act], gatekeepers must not treat their own services more favorably in ranking than third-party services.
They have to apply transparent, fair and non-discriminatory conditions to such rankings," the EC wrote. The Commission said that Google also unfairly prevented developers from informing Google Play users about alternate payment options that would have reduced Google's fees. All of that is in violation of the DMA, which was passed in 2022 to prevent big tech platforms from abusing their market power. "The best products should succeed because they're better, not because they're owned by the company running the search engine," said European Commission competition policy VP Teresa Ribera. "This is the promise of the DMA, protecting fairness, choice and innovation in digital markets for the benefit of all European citizens." Google must comply with the decision in 60 days or risk extra penalties up to 5 percent of its global turnover.
The company's general counsel, Kent Walker, said the decision will harm European users. "This isn't fair competition; it's product degradation," he told The New York Times in a statement. "Regulation should improve products, not make them worse." The fine represents less than one percent of the Google's $112.1 billion quarterly profit just announced in its earnings report. European officials said the timing of the announcement was in no way related to news that Trump is expected to introduce new tariffs on European goods. Observers are now waiting to see how the US government responds, after lawmakers urged the president to take "decisive actions" against EU regulation of US tech firms. However, American regulators have also targeted Google for the same types of anti-competitive actions.
Last year, it was ordered to hand over search data to rivals following a 2020 DOJ lawsuit against the company. "Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly," the presiding judge said back in 2024. The $1 billion fine is a far from the largest EU penalty against the search giant. Earlier this month, Google lost its final appeal over a $4.7 billion EU antitrust fine around its Android mobile operating system from 2018. Google was also fined $2.8 billion over its shopping search monopoly in 2017, losing its final appeal over that fine in 2024.
The BriefWire