The European Commission has fined Google €890 million for breaking the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), the first time the search giant has been penalised under the bloc’s landmark competition law. The decision, announced on 23 July 2026, splits into two separate breaches: a €460 million fine for favouring its own services in Google Search, and a €430 million fine for the way the Google Play Store stops app developers from pointing users to cheaper deals elsewhere. The combined penalty works out to roughly $1 billion.
What Google was fined for
On the search side, the Commission found that Google gives preferential treatment to its own verticals — shopping, hotels, transport and sports results — over rival services, showing them more prominently with richer visuals and filters that comparable third parties don’t get. On the Play Store side, the regulator concluded that Google prevented app developers from freely promoting alternative offers and steering users to other purchase channels. It also said the steering-related fees Google charges, and how long it charges them for, went beyond what the DMA allows.
“The best products should succeed because they’re better, not because they’re owned by the company running the search engine.”
That was Teresa Ribera, the Commission’s Executive Vice-President for competition, summing up the case against Google.
Why the Play Store half matters for Android users
For Android owners, the more consequential half of this decision is the €430 million Play Store fine. “Anti-steering” is the practice of stopping developers from telling you, inside their app, that the same subscription or in-app purchase is cheaper on their own website. Forcing Google to drop those restrictions in the EU means developers can openly point you to lower prices outside Play billing — and Google’s roughly 15–30% cut becomes something they can route around. In principle, that competitive pressure is how prices come down for the person actually paying.
This is the same forced-openness push that produced the Commission’s 16 July order requiring Google to open Android and Search to rival AI services. That earlier action was a forward-looking access order; this one is a monetary fine for breaches the Commission says are still ongoing.
Google’s response — and the spin to watch
Google is unhappy and has signalled it may take the decision to court. Kent Walker, the company’s head of global affairs, argued that to comply Google is being forced to “strip away real-time Search features Europeans love – like instant pricing and direct availability for hotels, flights, and restaurants – and dismantle safety protections on Google Play,” adding that “this isn’t fair competition.”
It’s worth reading that framing with a sceptical eye. Google casting anti-steering rules as a threat to “safety protections” is the same defensive language it and other platform owners reach for whenever they are told to loosen a lucrative gatekeeping practice — the DMA is specifically designed to stop dominant firms from wrapping self-interest in a security blanket. The features Google says it will pull are real conveniences, but framing a competition remedy as a loss for consumers glosses over who benefits from the current setup.
What happens next
Google has 60 days to end both breaches or face periodic penalty payments of up to 5% of its average daily worldwide turnover — a mechanism that can dwarf the headline fine if non-compliance drags on. The company is reportedly still in talks with Brussels to avoid further penalties. This also lands on top of an already heavy EU enforcement year for Google: a separate €2.95 billion adtech fine issued in September, and a final, unsuccessful appeal against the €4.1 billion Android antitrust fine earlier in July 2026.
For now, the changes are EU-only. There is no confirmed timeline for the search or Play Store adjustments reaching India, the US or other markets — though, as the US Epic case and the Play Store’s own concessions have shown, remedies won in one jurisdiction increasingly set the template for others.
