Google fined €890m by EU for Digital Markets Act breaches

The European Commission fined Google €890m on 23 July 2026 for breaching the Digital Markets Act, marking the first time the EU's landmark tech law has been used against the company and the largest penalty issued under the regulation to date.

The fine is split across two separate rulings. A €460m penalty covers Google's practice of promoting its own services in Search results, including Google Flights, Google Hotels, and restaurant booking tools, ahead of competing platforms. A further €430m fine relates to Play Store rules that prevented app developers from steering users towards cheaper purchasing options available outside Google's own marketplace.

Google's cumulative EU fines now exceed €10bn when combined with earlier antitrust penalties stretching back nearly two decades, including a €2.42bn Google Shopping ruling in 2017 and a €4.34bn Android fine in 2018.

EU competition chief Teresa Ribera framed the decision as a matter of principle. Products should win on quality, not on the advantage of being owned by the company that runs the search engine. EU tech commissioner Henna Virkkunen added that the Commission's aim was to restore the conditions under which other companies can compete and develop new products.

Google rejected the framing. Kent Walker, the company's president of global affairs, argued that complying with the Commission's requirements would force it to remove real-time Search features that European users rely on, including live pricing for hotels and flights, and to dismantle safety protections within the Play Store. The company said it is reviewing the decision and has not ruled out an appeal.

The decision arrived after a lengthy delay. Zach Meyers of the Centre on Regulation in Europe noted that the Commission held back from finalising the ruling earlier, in part to avoid straining EU-US relations at a sensitive diplomatic moment. President Donald Trump's administration has repeatedly accused Brussels of using tech regulation to disadvantage American firms, and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer warned that the fine could trigger retaliatory measures. European officials eventually concluded the delay served no purpose, given Washington's unpredictability on trade commitments.

Earlier this year the Commission fined Apple €500m and Meta €200m under the same law. Google's penalty dwarfs both and signals that Brussels intends to treat Search and app distribution as priority enforcement targets under the DMA. For further context on the UK's parallel approach to regulating large tech platforms, see the CMA's proposed controls on Google's AI content practices.

Google now has 60 days to bring both breaches to an end. On the Play Store side, the company has already introduced a revised global fee structure that took effect on 30 June 2026, allowing developers to steer users to alternative purchasing channels while applying service fees of 10–15% on those transactions. The Commission described those changes as progress but said they would be assessed against the compliance deadline rather than treated as resolution.

If Google fails to meet the deadline, the Commission can impose periodic penalty payments of up to 5% of the company's total worldwide turnover per day. On Alphabet's most recently reported revenues, the statutory ceiling for a first DMA violation would exceed $40bn. The €890m fine was calibrated deliberately below that ceiling, with the Commission opting to incentivise behavioural change rather than maximise the financial penalty.

The DMA designates seven companies as gatekeepers — Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Booking, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft — each of which has been required to comply with the regulation since March 2024. Google's case is the most significant enforcement action taken under the law to date and sets a precedent for how the Commission handles non-compliance from the remaining gatekeepers. Businesses competing in the flight, hotel, and restaurant booking verticals will be watching the compliance window closely to see whether Search results shift in their favour once Google moves to meet the ruling's requirements. Publishers and developers tracking Google Analytics and Google Trends data will be monitoring for any traffic changes that follow.