Google just ran out of courtrooms. On July 2, the European Court of Justice dismissed the tech giant’s final appeal against a €4.1 billion ($4.7 billion) antitrust fine, ending an eight-year legal battle that began when the European Commission first brought the hammer down in 2018.
The ruling makes this the largest antitrust penalty the EU has ever imposed that is now definitively enforceable. Every possible appeal has been exhausted, and Google’s legal options are officially zero.
What Google actually did
The case centers on Android, Google’s mobile operating system that powers the vast majority of smartphones worldwide. The European Commission determined back in 2018 that Google had abused its dominant position by requiring device manufacturers to pre-install Google Search and Chrome as a condition for using Android.
In English: if Samsung or any other phonemaker wanted to ship devices running Android, they had to bundle Google’s apps whether they wanted to or not. Regulators argued this effectively locked out competing search engines and browsers from the most valuable real estate in tech, your phone’s home screen.
