Google loses EU top court fight over €4.1 billion Android fine

Earlier this year, Google was told to lift technical barriers to rival AI search assistants on Android and provide key data to other search engine providers. Photo by JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images

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Google lost its long-running fight against a €4.1 billion (US$4.7 billion) European Union antitrust fine after the bloc’s top judges said regulators were right to punish the United States giant for abusing Android’s market power.

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The European Court of Justice ruled on Thursday that Google’s earlier defeat against a European Commission penalty should stand. The decision is legally binding and marks a significant win for the Brussels-based regulator, which has been fighting Google through the EU’s courts since the fine was first levelled in 2018.

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“The appeal brought by Google and its parent company Alphabet against the judgment of the General Court is dismissed, thereby confirming the penalty imposed for Google Search’s abuse of a dominant position in the context of the Android operating system,” the court said in a statement on the judgment.

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Android figures at the Google headquarters in Mountain View, California. Photographer David Paul Morris/Bloomberg Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

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The decision is a constraint on the Android business model — which has provided free software in exchange for conditions imposed on mobile phone manufacturers. Such contracts provoked the ire of the commission in 2018, when the watchdog accused Alphabet Inc.’s Google of three separate types of illegal behaviour that helped cement the dominance of its search engine, accompanying the order with the then-record fine. The decision also paves the way for a wave of potential lawsuits from victims of Google’s behaviour.

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Google said the ruling “fails to recognize our significant investment to ensure Android remains open, interoperable and free. In any event, we adapted our agreements to comply with the initial decision back in 2018 and we remain focused on continued innovation and openness for our users, partners and developers.”

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FairSearch, a group of complainants that brought the case to the commission in 2013, called the ruling “an important victory in Europe’s highest court against Google’s anti-competitive conduct in mobile markets.”

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Play Store

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Commission spokesman Ricardo Cardoso said the regulator would “carefully assess” the details of the court win.

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In its decision to fine Google, the commission said it was illegally forcing handset makers to pre-install the Google Search app and the Chrome browser as a condition for licensing its Play Store — the marketplace for Android apps.

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Secondly, the EU said Google made payments to some large manufacturers and operators on condition that they exclusively pre-installed the Google Search app.

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Lastly, the EU said the Mountain View, California-based company prevented manufacturers wishing to pre-install apps from running alternative versions of Android not approved by Google.

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In a September 2022 ruling at the EU’s lower General Court, judges upheld the vast majority of the commission’s arguments, but cut the fine from €4.3 billion after finding that regulators hadn’t provided enough evidence for specific abuses.