Europe's highest court has upheld Google's 4.1 billion euro Android antitrust fine, closing an eight year legal fight and confirming that EU regulators can make a multibillion euro penalty stick.
Google just ran out of appeals. On July 2, the Court of Justice of the European Union dismissed the company's final challenge to the 4.1 billion euro fine the European Commission imposed back in 2018, according to CNBC. Eight years, three rulings, and Google ends up exactly where the Commission put it: on the hook for one of the largest antitrust penalties Brussels has ever handed a single company.
The case traces back to a 2018 Commission finding that Google abused its dominance over Android to protect its search business. Manufacturers who wanted access to the Play Store had to preinstall Google Search and Chrome. Google paid some of them for exclusivity. And it used anti-fragmentation agreements to stop phone makers from shipping forked versions of Android that might have opened the door to rival search engines. The Commission fined Google 4.34 billion euros. The General Court trimmed that to 4.125 billion euros in September 2022, tossing out one narrow piece of the case involving Google's revenue-sharing deals but leaving the core findings intact.
Google took that outcome to the EU's court of last resort anyway. It didn't go well. Advocate General Juliane Kokott, whose opinions the Court of Justice follows roughly four times out of five, recommended in June 2025 that the appeal be tossed. It has now been tossed, for good.
A Google spokesperson called the outcome a setback that could discourage investment in open platforms and harm Android users, partners and app developers, adding that Android has created more choice for everyone and supports thousands of successful businesses in Europe and around the world. That is the company's standard defense of Android's business model, and there is some truth to it. Android is free to license and has helped keep phone prices down worldwide. It just was not, according to three separate EU rulings now, an argument that excused paying manufacturers to lock out competitors.
This ruling lands one day after a Swedish court ordered Google to pay Klarna's PriceRunner subsidiary more than 14 billion kronor, close to two billion dollars once interest is included, the largest competition damages award in Swedish history. The Stockholm Patent and Market Court found Google had illegally favored its own comparison shopping service over PriceRunner's in search results, building on the Commission's 2017 Google Shopping decision. Earlier this year, a German court ordered Google to pay Idealo 465 million euros and Producto 107 million euros for the same kind of self-preferencing conduct.
Three countries, three separate cases, one company. Line them up and the pattern is hard to miss. Google is not losing on a technicality somewhere. It is losing on the same core behavior, self-preferencing and exclusivity, in front of different judges applying different laws.
The stakes go beyond the checks Google has to write. The Digital Markets Act, the EU's newer rulebook for gatekeeper platforms, already restricts exactly the kind of preinstallation deals and self-preferencing that got Google in trouble here. This ruling gives the Commission a fully affirmed precedent to point to as it pursues open DMA investigations into Apple's App Store terms, Meta's ad targeting practices, and Amazon's marketplace ranking. If the courts will sustain a four billion euro fine through eight years and three rounds of appeals, regulators have less reason to soften their DMA cases to avoid a repeat fight.
Frankly, the appeal was always a long shot once the General Court upheld the core findings in 2022. What this ruling actually settles is smaller and more useful. Brussels can make a record fine stick against the best funded legal team in tech, and it will take the time to do it properly rather than cave under years of pressure. For Apple and Meta, currently arguing their own DMA cases through the same court system, that is the part worth reading twice.
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