The EU’s top court is due to rule Thursday on Google’s appeal against a record €4.125 billion ($4.67 billion) antitrust fine over alleged anti-competitive practices.
The European Commission imposed a €4.3 billion fine in 2018, accusing Google of abusing the market dominance of its Android system by requiring phone makers to pre-install Google Search and Chrome.
The EU’s executive branch accused the tech giant of restricting competition, while slapping the bloc with its largest antitrust fine ever.
The General Court of the EU upheld the findings in 2022, but reduced the fine from €4.34 billion to €4.125 billion.
Google claims EU unaware of Apple’s practices
Appealing the 2022 ruling, Google filed a new challenge before the European Court of Justice, the bloc’s top court.
Google claimed the case was baseless, saying the sanction punished innovation and that Android users were free to download rival apps.
Earlier, the tech giant had also accused the EU of being blind to Apple’s practices in pushing its services on iPhones.
Google received more than €8 billion
The latest case is one of several antitrust disputes between Google and the EU, with the company losing more than €8 billion over antitrust violations between 2017 and 2019.
The EU has other open investigations into the tech giant under its Digital Markets Act (DMA).
Google faces other EU restrictions to exploit its market dominance:
- Fined €2.95 billion in September 2025 for favoring its own advertising services
- €2.4 billion competition fine for promoting its own shopping services
Last year, US President Donald Trump accused Brussels of unfairly targeting US companies and threatened the EU with retaliatory tariffs.
Edited by: Carl Sexton
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