The European Commission has hit Google with fines totalling €890 million for breaking the Digital Markets Act (DMA). Two separate decisions were announced today, with a €460 million fine for favouring its own services in Google Search results and a €430 million fine for stopping app developers from pointing users toward cheaper deals outside the Google Play store.
The DMA came into force to stop the biggest tech platforms from using their size to crowd out competitors. Google was designated a gatekeeper under the law in September 2023. The Commission opened formal non-compliance investigations in March 2024, and by March 2025 had told Google it believed the company was in breach. Today’s fines are the result of that process.
For European businesses and consumers, the stakes are real. When a company controls both the search engine and the services showing up at the top of it, smaller competitors struggle to get seen, no matter how good their product is. The DMA was designed to fix exactly that.
On the search side, the Commission found that Google gives its own services, including shopping, hotels, transport and sports results, more prominent placement than third-party services. That means Google’s results appear at the top of the page, with enhanced visuals and filters, while competing services get pushed further down without the same treatment.
The app store issue is about what developers can and cannot tell their own users. Under the DMA, app developers distributing through Google Play must be free to tell customers about cheaper offers available elsewhere, such as on their own website or through a rival app store, without being charged for doing so. The Commission found Google blocked this. It also found that the fees Google charged developers for steering users elsewhere, and how long those fees applied, went beyond what the law allows.
Google is now required to fix both issues within 60 days. If it fails to do so, it faces further penalty payments of up to 5% of its total worldwide annual turnover. That is a significant threat given Google’s parent company Alphabet reported revenues of over $350 billion in 2024.
The Commission did acknowledge some progress. After discussions with regulators, Google has already started testing changes to how it displays its own services in Search for free results such as shopping, hotels and flights. The Commission said this is a meaningful step toward compliance and will be monitored. Google has also proposed changes to how it handles shopping ads and content-related services like sports results, which are still being assessed.
There are also early-stage conversations about how these rules will apply to Google’s newer AI products, including AI Overviews and AI Mode, where Google surfaces answers directly in search without sending users to third-party sites at all. That dialogue is ongoing.
On the Play Store side, the Commission noted that Google has rolled out changes to its steering terms, which it described as good progress, though these will also be evaluated against today’s cease and desist order.
Google has the right to appeal both decisions, and given the size of the fines and the precedent they set, an appeal seems likely. But today’s action is a signal that the Commission is willing to use the DMA’s enforcement tools against the biggest players, not just issue warnings. Executive Vice President Teresa Ribera put it plainly: the best products should win because they are better, not because they are owned by the company running the search engine.
This is also not happening in isolation. The DMA has already triggered investigations into Apple, Meta and other major platforms. Regulators across Europe are watching closely to see whether fines at this level actually change behaviour, or whether large tech companies simply treat them as a cost of doing business.