European court upholds €4.1bn fine against Google for anticompetitive practices

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has upheld a €4.1 billion fine against Google over allegations of anti-competitive practices.

A fine of €4.34 billion was first levelled against Google in 2018, with the European Commission arguing that the tech giant had abused Android’s dominant market position.

At the time, the Commission alleged that Google had acted illegally in requiring developers to pre-install Google’s browser in order to access the Play store, moving to block third-party Android forks, and paying manufacturers to pre-install Google search on their devices.

Google has repeatedly tried and failed to overturn the fine. In 2022, a lower European court reduced it to €4.1 billion citing faults in the European Commission’s initial findings.

Now, the EU’s highest court has dismissed Google’s appeal, meaning the tech giant will be forced to pay the fine.

“The Court of Justice dismisses the appeal brought by Google and Alphabet against that judgment of the General Court, thereby confirming the penalty imposed on them, as revised by the General Court, for their anti-competitive practices relating to the Android operating system,” the ECJ said in a press release.

In a statement, a Google spokesperson said: “Android provides more choice for everyone and supports thousands of businesses.

“This judgment fails to recognise our significant investment to ensure Android remains open, interoperable and free. In any event, we adapted our agreements to comply with the initial decision back in 2018 and we remain focused on continued innovation and openness for our users, partners and developers.”

Google has previously said the fine punished innovation and argued that its practices have changed significantly since 2018. It also said that Android increases rather than decreases consumer choice.

The fine brings the EU’s total fines against Google in the past decade to over €11 billion. This includes a €2.4 billion fine for alleged anti-competitive use of its shopping comparison service, a €2.95 billion fine for alleged violation of anti-competitive adtech practices, and a €1.49 billion fine for allegedly “abusive” practices in online advertising.

On 1 July, the Korea Fair Trade Commission’s Market Surveillance Bureau accused Google of abusing its android app market position to prevent competition. Google has eight weeks from receiving the regulator’s report to submit a response and could be fined up to six per cent of the relevant affected revenue if found to have acted in an anti-competitive manner.