Google just lost what might be the most expensive legal argument in corporate history. The tech giant’s challenge against a €4.125 billion European Union antitrust fine has been dismissed, marking a definitive conclusion to a regulatory saga that stretches back nearly a decade.
The fine, originally set at €4.34 billion by the European Commission in 2018, was trimmed to €4.125 billion by the EU General Court in 2022. Google appealed to the European Court of Justice hoping for a bigger reduction, or better yet, a full reversal. Instead, it got neither.
What Google actually did
The European Commission found that Google abused its dominant position in the mobile operating system market through two key mechanisms. First, pre-installation requirements that forced phone manufacturers to bundle Google Search and Chrome as a condition of licensing the Google Play Store. Second, revenue-sharing agreements that financially incentivized manufacturers to exclusively pre-install Google’s search engine.
The Commission’s original 2018 decision concluded that these practices reinforced Google’s search dominance in mobile, a market where Android powers the vast majority of smartphones sold in Europe. By making it nearly impossible for alternative search engines or browsers to gain default placement on new devices, Google effectively turned its operating system into a distribution moat.
