The European Commission fined Google €890 million on Thursday for breaking the Digital Markets Act, the first time Brussels has penalised the company under the rulebook it built to rein in the largest technology platforms

.The penalty divides in two. A €460 million share covers search self-preferencing, where Google gave its own shopping, hotel, transport, and sports results more prominent placement than competing services without applying, in the Commission’s words, “transparent, fair and non-discriminatory conditions.”

The remaining €430 million concerns anti-steering rules on Google Play, where the company charged fees and set terms that stopped developers from freely directing users to cheaper purchase options outside its store.

“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 competition, as she set out the decision.

The Commission cast both practices as breaches of the gatekeeper obligations the DMA imposes on the handful of platforms it deems systemically important.

It is Google’s first sanction under the DMA, though not the regime’s first. Apple and Meta were fined €500 million and €200 million respectively in April 2025, the earliest penalties issued since the law took full effect.

Brussels has pressed Google on other fronts too, including a push to open Android to rival AI assistants under the same legislation.

The case dates to March 2024, when the Commission opened non-compliance proceedings against Alphabet days after the DMA’s obligations became binding on designated gatekeepers. Investigators set out preliminary findings on the search and Play conduct before finalising the fine.

Under the decision, Google has 60 days to end both practices or face periodic penalty payments of up to 5% of Alphabet’s average daily worldwide turnover.

The DMA allows fines of up to 10% of global annual revenue for a first breach, and up to 20% for repeat offences, so €890 million sits well below the theoretical ceiling for a company of Alphabet’s size.

The complaints came largely from price-comparison services, vertical search rivals, and app developers, who argued that Google’s rankings and fees left them unable to compete on equal terms.

Google was designated a gatekeeper in 2023 for core services including Search, Android, Chrome, and Google Play, the label that brought Thursday’s obligations to bear.

Google pushed back hard. Kent Walker, its president of global affairs, called the ruling unfair, describing it as “product degradation driven by a small group of self-serving complainants” rather than genuine competition.

The company argues that the changes Brussels wants would make its services worse for users.

Even so, Google has begun testing revised search layouts and has altered its Play steering terms, steps the Commission acknowledged as “substantial progress” towards compliance.

Regulators are still assessing how the company’s AI Overviews and AI Mode features sit against the same obligations, and the Commission said it would keep monitoring the search and Play changes before deciding whether they go far enough.

Whether Google intends to appeal was not confirmed at the time of the announcement, though the company has contested every major European fine of the past decade in court.

The DMA fine is separate from the bloc’s older antitrust cases. The EU’s top court this month upheld a record €4.1 billion Android penalty, and Google had earlier floated concessions on news-search ranking to head off fresh DMA scrutiny.

Reported widely in dollars as a “$1 billion” fine, the penalty is fixed in euros at €890 million, or roughly $1.02 billion at current rates, with US coverage leaning on the rounder number.

The timing is delicate. The Trump administration has repeatedly cast the EU’s digital rulebook as a trade irritant and a de facto tax on American firms, and trade commissioner Maroš Šefčovič has spent months managing the friction.

Thursday’s decision lands as Washington and Brussels wrangle over tariffs, giving a technical competition ruling an unmistakably political edge.