BRUSSELS: The European Union on Thursday slapped Google with fines worth 890 million euros ($1 billion) in a move that risks escalating tensions with the United States. The EU fined the US giant 460 million euros for illegally favoring the company\u2019s own services\u2014for example, Google Flights or Google Hotels\u2014over rivals in search results. The second fine worth 430 million euros was because Google did not allow app developers to show consumers offers, free of charge, outside of its Google Play store, the European Commission said in a statement. \u201cAfter this decision, we want to make sure that there is more competition and also other companies are able to innovate,\u201d EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen said. A senior EU official said Google \u201cstill\u201d continued to favor its own services, but the second fine covered a period between March 2024 to December 2025. The US titan accused the EU of dismantling safety protections on Google Play. \u201cRegulation should improve products, not make them worse,\u201d Google\u2019s Kent Walker said in a statement. The fines come just days before the first anniversary of a tariff deal struck between Washington and Brussels that eased trade frictions. President Donald Trump\u2019s administration has previously accused Brussels of targeting US tech firms and threatened to retaliate against the EU with tariffs.<\/p>\n
Google: \u2018Not fair competition\u2019 <\/p>\n
The fines are the biggest in total against one company under the competition law known as the Digital Markets Act (DMA), after the EU slapped penalties of 200 million and 500 million euros against Meta and Apple respectively in 2025. The DMA came into effect in 2024 and seeks to rein in what the EU views as Big Tech\u2019s excesses in a bid to ensure fair competition in the digital realm. The fines against Google have been expected for months as part of a probe that began in 2024, but Brussels has faced claims of delaying the move over fears of hurting ties with Washington. The EU can slap fines of up to 10 percent of a company\u2019s total global turnover for breaching the DMA. A second EU official said the fines were worth 0.22 percent of Google\u2019s turnover. The fines could rise further if Google fails to comply within 60 days, the Commission said, threatening it with \u201cperiodic penalty payments\u201d. \u201cThe best products should succeed because they\u2019re better, not because they\u2019re owned by the company running the search engine,\u201d EU competition chief Teresa Ribera said in a statement. Google hit out at Brussels, saying the EU forced the company to degrade products in the bloc. Google\u2019s head of global affairs Kent Walker said the company was being forced to \u201cstrip away real-time Search features Europeans love\u2014like instant pricing and direct availability for hotels, flights, and restaurants\u2014and dismantle safety protections on Google Play\u201d. \u201cThis isn\u2019t fair competition,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
EU \u2018discriminatory\u2019 rules <\/p>\n
Google is no stranger to EU fines. Between 2017 and 2019, the EU hit the company with fines worth a total of 8.2 billion euros. Brussels imposed a 2.95-billion-euro fine in a separate case under different antitrust rules in September last year, after which Trump threatened to retaliate against the EU. The EU, however, appeared sanguine on Thursday about any US retaliation. The EU\u2019s duty is to \u201censure that the regulation that is being adopted by our sovereign institutions is fully enforced and respected,\u201d Ribera told reporters. She said there were similar cases in the United States and American authorities were \u201cdealing with very similar approaches\u201d. The EU and the United States agreed this year to address frictions linked to the bloc\u2019s digital rules through talks, but they have yet to begin. Some 25 US lawmakers belonging to Trump\u2019s Republican party in a letter on Tuesday urged the president to use tools against the EU\u2019s \u201cdiscriminatory\u201d digital rules such as trade investigations that could lead to higher levies. Virkkunen insisted Europe would not waiver in enforcement. \u201cWe are very committed to our rules,\u201d she told journalists.- AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BRUSSELS: The European Union on Thursday slapped Google with fines worth 890 million euros ($1 billion) in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30069,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5],"tags":[16504,18,89,16506,3681,16508,3147,16505,16507,1711],"class_list":["post-30068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brussels","tag-16504","tag-brussels","tag-eu","tag-euros","tag-fines","tag-fury","tag-google","tag-million","tag-risking","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@be\/116970518538554996","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}