890 million euros. That is what the European Commission just extracted from Google on Thursday, making it the largest penalty ever handed out under the Digital Markets Act. In dollar terms, the bill lands at roughly $1 billion.
The ruling centers on two specific behaviors regulators say Google refused to drop. First, the company systematically pushed its own shopping, travel and translation results to the top of search pages while burying rivals. Second, Android developers were blocked from directing customers to cheaper payment options outside the Google Play Store. The Commission framed both as violations of the DMA, which came into force in 2024 and was designed to stop digital gatekeepers from tilting the market in their own favor.
Teresa Ribera, the Commission's executive vice president for competition, put it plainly: the best products should win because they're better, not because they happen to belong to whoever runs the search engine. Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier added that top platforms are legally obligated to keep the playing field level so consumers can actually find cheaper deals.
The fine sounds large, but 890 million euros works out to just 0.22 percent of Google's global turnover. The DMA allows Brussels to go as high as 10 percent for serious breaches, so the Commission had plenty of room to hit harder. For context, the EU fined Meta 200 million euros and Apple 500 million euros earlier in 2025, meaning Google's penalty dwarfs both of those combined. Still, critics will note that a company of Google's size can absorb a billion dollars without breaking a sweat.
Google now has 60 days to change its conduct. Miss that window and steeper fines follow automatically under the DMA framework.
