Europe's Top Court Upholds €4.1 Billion Fine Against Google's Android Practices

BRUSSELS — Europe’s top court on Thursday dismissed Google’s appeal against a €4.1 billion Android antitrust fine, handing the European Commission a major victory in one of its longest-running antitrust battles with Big Tech.

The Court of Justice of the European Union upheld a lower court’s 2022 judgment, which largely backed the Commission’s finding that Google abused its dominant position by imposing restrictions on makers of smartphones that use its Android operating system and mobile network operators to protect the dominance of its Search and Chrome services.

The General Court reduced the original €4.34 billion penalty to €4.125 billion, a fine that now stands.

The ruling “fails to recognize our significant investment to ensure Android remains open, interoperable and free,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement. The company said it had complied with the initial findings from 2018 and remains “focused on continued innovation and openness for our users, partners and developers.”

The ruling brings to a close a case that was one of the defining antitrust battles of former Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager’s tenure and reinforces the Commission’s use of traditional competition law to tackle the market power of digital platforms.

At the heart of the case were agreements requiring smartphone manufacturers seeking access to Google’s Play Store to pre-install Google Search and Chrome, alongside restrictions that the Commission said made it harder for rival search engines and browsers to compete.

The judgment is also expected to shape future abuse-of-dominance cases under Article 102, particularly on how EU competition authorities assess tying practices in digital markets.

While the bloc now relies increasingly on the Digital Markets Act to regulate large online platforms, the ruling provides another judicial endorsement of the legal principles that underpinned Brussels’ earlier antitrust crackdown on Big Tech.