Brussels fines Google €2.95 billion... no wait, another €890 million, this time over Search and Play Store

Key points

• The European Commission fined Google €890 million (about $1 billion) on Thursday for breaking the Digital Markets Act.
• €460 million covers Google favouring its own shopping, hotel, transport and sports results in Search; €430 million covers Play Store rules that stop app developers pointing users to cheaper deals elsewhere.
• Google has 60 days to end the practices or face daily penalty payments of up to 5% of its worldwide turnover.
• The company was designated a DMA "gatekeeper" for Google Search in September 2023, with the non-compliance probe opened in March 2024.
• This follows a €2.95 billion adtech fine from the Commission in September and a €325 million French data protection fine over Gmail ads the same month.

Google has been fined again in Europe. The European Commission announced on Thursday that the company owes €890 million, roughly $1 billion, for breaking the Digital Markets Act. That is the EU's competition rulebook for the biggest online platforms, known as the DMA.

The fine splits in two. Google gets €460 million for pushing its own services above rivals in search results, and €430 million for how it runs the Google Play app store.

What did Google actually do wrong?

According to the Commission, Google put its own shopping, hotel, transport and sports results above competing sites when people searched. So a small hotel comparison site had no real chance of ranking against Google's own hotel box, even when its offer was better.

In the Play Store, the problem was different. Google stopped app developers from telling their own users about cheaper prices available outside the store. If a music app wanted to say "subscribe on our website for less", Google's rules got in the way.

Both practices are banned under the DMA for companies designated as "gatekeepers", the label the EU applies to the handful of platforms big enough to set the rules of the market. Google Search was named a gatekeeper in September 2023, and the Commission opened its non-compliance investigation in March 2024.

What happens next?

Google has 60 days to stop the offending behaviour. If it doesn't, the Commission can order daily penalty payments of up to 5% of the company's worldwide daily turnover, which for Alphabet is a serious number. Google can also appeal the decision, and it almost certainly will.

The Commission did note, as first reported by BleepingComputer, that Google has started testing changes to how its own services show up in search and has updated its steering rules for developers. Brussels called that "substantial progress" but not enough to avoid the fine.

"The best products should succeed because they're better, not because they're owned by the company running the search engine," said Teresa Ribera, the Commission's Executive Vice-President for Clean, Just and Competitive Transition, in the official statement.

How does this fit with Google's other European fines?

It is the latest in a run. Here is the recent tally:

That is close to €8.3 billion in European penalties inside a single year, all pointing at the same underlying question: whether Google's default services get an unfair leg up because Google owns the pipes.

Does this change anything for ordinary users?

Probably yes, slowly. If the enforcement sticks, searches for hotels or flights should start surfacing more independent comparison sites. And apps you use every day, from streaming services to dating apps, should be free to tell you when a subscription is cheaper on their own website. That is the whole point of the DMA: to let smaller companies compete without paying a toll to whoever owns the search box or the app store.