The Court of Justice of the European Union has definitively closed one of Google’s longest antitrust litigations in Europe. And the organization confirmed this Thursday the fine of 4.1 billion euros imposed by the European Commission for the company’s use of Android to harm its rivals, as reported by the court itself in a statement. The sanction is final, so the company has no further opportunity to appeal.
What has happened? The origin of this case dates back to 2018, when Brussels imposed Google a record fine of 4,340 million euros for forcing mobile phone manufacturers to pre-install Google Search, the Chrome browser and the Google Play store if they wanted to have access to the rest of the Android ecosystem, in addition to preventing them from installing alternative versions of the operating system, according to collect Bloomberg.
In 2022, a lower EU court slightly reduced the amount up to 4.1 billion euros, although it maintained many of the Commission’s arguments. Google appealed that decision to the Court of Justice of the EU, which has now rejected the appeal and has definitively ruled in favor of the regulator.
The largest antitrust fine. For Brussels, Google abused its dominant position to shield its search engine and its applications from the competition. This is the largest antitrust fine that the company has received in Europe and, according to share To CNBC, lawyer Alex Haffner, partner at the Fladgate firm, represents the closing of what could be called the “first phase” of the Commission’s fight with big technology based on classic competition laws.
In detail. The Commission detected three illegal practices in the Android deal:
- First: it forced manufacturers to pre-install Google Search and Chrome as a condition of being able to license the Google Play store.
- Second: it paid large manufacturers and operators in exchange for installing its search engine exclusively.
- And third: it prevented manufacturers from launching phones with versions of Android not approved by Google itself, according to details Bloomberg.
Google has always defended that Android offers more options to users and supports thousands of businesses in Europe. A company spokesperson has assured CNBCthat the ruling “does not recognize the significant investment” made to keep Android open, interoperable and free, although it has stressed that the company has already adapted its contracts to comply with the original decision since 2018.
Between the lines. This ruling comes at a particularly delicate time for Google in Europe. The company has already accumulated nearly 11,000 million euros in antitrust fines in the last two decades, according to Reutersand last year the Commission already imposed another sanction of 2,950 million euros for its practices in digital advertising.
The ruling also opens the door for companies that consider themselves harmed by these practices to claim compensation on their own, an avenue that has already begun to be explored, since from Bloomberg remember that Google was condemned just a day before to pay nearly $2 billion to Klarna in other related antitrust litigation. On the other hand, the organization FairSearch, which submitted the original complaint to the Commission in 2013, has qualified the ruling as “an important victory against Google’s anti-competitive conduct in the mobile market.”
And now what. The regulatory focus in Brussels is no longer so much on traditional competition laws as on Digital Markets Law (DMA) and the Digital Services Lawthe new legislative tools with which the EU monitors big technology companies. Google already faces other files opened under these rules, including one for favoring its own services in search results and another for its practices in the application store.
Added to this is the open investigation into whether the company unfairly harms certain news results, notes Bloomberg. The current political background doesn’t help either. And the president of the United States, Donald Trump, has threatened tariffs 100% to countries that impose digital taxes on US technology companies, a measure that directly affects countries like France or Spain, CNBC points out. Everything indicates that regulatory pressure on Google in Europe will continue to intensify in the coming months. We’ll see what happens.
Cover image | Guillaume Perigois and Alex Dudar on Unsplash
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