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The European Court of Justice upheld a record €4.1 billion ($4.7 billion) antitrust fine against Google on Thursday, rejecting the tech giant’s final appeal.
The ruling solidifies the European Commission’s 2018 decision, which penalised Google for using its Android operating system to suppress competition.
The penalty remains the largest antitrust fine in the European Union’s history, and the court held Google’s parent company, Alphabet, jointly liable.
The European Commission originally fined Google €4.3 billion after investigators found that the company forced phone manufacturers to pre-install the Google Search app and Chrome browser on Android devices.
While the EU’s lower General Court slightly reduced the penalty to €4.1 billion in 2022, it sustained the core antitrust findings.
Google launched this final appeal by arguing that the EU ignored competition from Apple and that the ruling penalised innovation, but the high court rejected all of Google’s arguments and ordered the company to pay the EU’s legal costs.
The tech giant expressed disappointment with the verdict, stating that the court failed to recognise its investments in keeping Android open and free.
A company spokesperson noted that Google already altered its contracts in 2018 to comply with the initial decision.
Between 2017 and 2019, Brussels hit Google with three separate antitrust penalties totalling €8.2 billion, sparking multiple long-running legal battles.
To prevent these protracted legal sagas, the EU recently implemented the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which replaces years-long investigations with strict, upfront rules for tech giants.
Regulators are already targeting Google with several formal DMA probes.
These ongoing tech crackdowns have drawn sharp criticism from US President Donald Trump, who accused Brussels of unfairly targeting American corporations and threatened to impose retaliatory tariffs on EU exports.
