EU's top court to rule on Google's €4.125 billion antitrust fine appeal

The European Union's top court is set to rule on 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 penalty in 2018, accusing Google of abusing its Android system's market dominance by requiring phone makers to pre-install Google Search and Chrome.

The EU's executive branch accused the tech giant of restricting competition while imposing the bloc's highest antitrust fine ever.

The EU's General Court upheld the findings in 2022, but reduced the fine from €4.34 billion to €4.125 billion.

Google claimed EU blind to 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 unfounded, saying that the sanction penalized innovation and that Android users were free to download rival apps.

Earlier, the tech giant had also accused the EU of being blind to practices by Apple pushing its own services on iPhones.

Google fined more than €8 billion

The latest case is one of several antitrust disputes between Google and the EU, which fined the company more than €8 billion between 2017 and 2019 over antitrust violations.

The EU has other open investigations into the tech giant under its Digital Markets Act (DMA).

Among the other EU sanctions Google is facing for exploiting its market dominance are:

€2.95 billion fine handed down 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 American firms and threatened the EU with retaliatory tariffs.