Google Search charged with breaking EU antitrust rules

Google is breaking European antitrust laws by favoring its own Shopping, Hotels, and Flights search services over rival comparison providers, according to the European Commission. The EU announced in its preliminary ruling today that Google’s parent company, Alphabet, had also violated anti-steering rules under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) by preventing app developers on its Play Store from steering customers to other distribution channels.

Google can challenge the preliminary charges or make additional compliance changes ahead of the EU’s final ruling. The EU can fine companies up to 10 percent of their global annual revenue for DMA violations, which would be a maximum of $35 billion based on the $350 billion Alphabet earned in 2024.

“In the first case, our preliminary view is that Alphabet is in breach of the Digital Markets Act by favouring its own products on the Google Search results page, which means suppliers and competitors do not benefit from fair ranking practices,” Teresa Ribera, European executive vice president for clean, just, and competitive transition, says in a statement.

Google believes the changes Europe is pushing for in search are “misguided,” Oliver Bethell, Google’s senior director of competition, writes in a blog post. Bethell warns, for example, that if Google “can’t show travel results that take people directly to airline sites, they typically end up with a more expensive ticket because airlines have to pay commissions to intermediary websites.” He also says the changes have led to traffic declines of up to 30 percent for some businesses.

When it comes to Google’s mobile app store, the EU believes that “Alphabet does not effectively allow Android phone users to be told about or directed to cheaper offers from app developers outside the Google Play store,” Ribera says.

Bethell says the commission’s findings on app distribution “create a false choice between openness and security.” He says the government “is effectively forcing us to choose between a closed model” — more similar to Apple’s iOS, which requires apps to be reviewed before distribution — “and an unsafe one,” where Google is forced to give users access to “scammy or malicious links that take our users outside of the secure Play environment.”

Europe’s EVP for tech sovereignty, security, and democracy, Henna Virkkunen, says that “both practices negatively impact many European and non-European businesses that rely on Google Search or Google Play to reach their users in the EU. Ensuring that Alphabet fully complies with the DMA is key to ensure business and innovation opportunities for all providers of digital services.”

The announcement comes after the EU opened an investigation into Google Search on March 25th over concerns that it was treating its own services more favorably in Search’s ranking than services provided by third-party rivals — something the EU fined the company €2.4 billion (worth about $2.5 billion today) for doing with Google Shopping in 2017. Apple was the first company to be charged under the DMA in June 2024, and soon after, Meta was hit with a preliminary ruling that its advertising model also violates the act.

Google had introduced several changes to its Search services in a bid to comply with new DMA rules. These included adding new search result layouts that boosted links to third-party comparison websites and removing the Google Flights widget for Search users in the EU. It even tested a decluttered return to the classic 10 blue links.

The DMA targets specific “gatekeepers” — companies that provide core digital services to European consumers — requiring them to allow more interoperability and avoid giving their own digital services preferential treatment. Alphabet was designated as a gatekeeper in September 2023, with a compliance deadline of March 6th, 2024.

The ruling follows rising tensions between European policymakers and US President Donald Trump, who has surrounded himself with fawning US tech CEOs who have criticized fines placed on them by the EU as a form of taxation. The Financial Times reported in January that an increase in US pressure was allegedly leading the EU to soften its approach to big tech regulation and reassess its investigations into Apple, Meta, and Google.