Upheld Court of Justice of the European Unionthe highest judicial body in the Federation, the record fine 4.1 billion euros (about $4.67 billion) imposed on a company GoogleAfter rejecting the appeal submitted by the parent company Alphabetin a case related to monopolistic practices related to the operating system Android.
The court confirmed in a statement that Google abused its dominance in the search market by imposing conditions on phone manufacturers and telecommunications network operators, which included pre-installing applications such as Google Search and Google Chrome and making them the default search services on most devices sold in Europe, which limited competitors’ opportunities to reach users.
The case dates back to 2018, when the European Commission imposed a record fine that initially amounted to 4.34 billion euros before later reducing it to about 4.1 billion euros, based on Google’s revenues from search ads on Android devices within the European Economic Area, with the company obligated to stop violating practices within 90 days.
The court explained that the General Court of the European Union was not mistaken in its assessment of the anti-competitive effects resulting from the Android agreements, considering that the conditions for pre-installation of applications illegally strengthened Google’s dominance, and it also considered that the grounds for calculating the fine were legally justified.
This case comes within a series of European investigations related to competition, as Google was previously imposed with another fine of 2.4 billion euros in 2017 due to favoring its shopping service in search results, and the ruling was finally upheld in 2024.
Google is still facing other investigations under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) in the European Union, including accusations of favoring its services in search results, and restricting application developers from directing users to payment methods outside the Google Play Store, in addition to investigations related to the way news content is displayed in search results.
