The European Union (EU) is preparing a new major antitrust fine for Google, and according to information that has appeared in European media and agency reports, it is potentially the largest sanction so far imposed under the rules of the Digital Markets Act regulation, known as the DMA.
According to the German Handelsblatt, which is reported by Reuters, the European Commission plans to impose a fine of hundreds of millions of euros on Alphabet, the owner of Google, because of the way Google displays its own services in the search results. The decision could be announced before the summer break of the European institutions.
The essence of the dispute lies in one of the key issues of the modern Internet: whether a platform that controls access to information can simultaneously be a neutral intermediary and a privileged participant in its own market. European regulators believe that Google favors its own products, such as Google Shopping, Google News service and other vertical platforms, giving them a privileged position in the search results compared to the competition.
The investigation was formally opened in 2025 as part of the DMA regulation, a European law that came into force with the aim of limiting the dominance of the largest technology companies, the so-called “gatekeeper” platforms.
Unlike previous antitrust processes that lasted for years, the DMA was conceived as a proactive regulatory tool. The European Commission is now not only trying to penalize companies retroactively, but wants to force them to change the way they do business before market dominance becomes virtually impossible to challenge. This is precisely why this case has a much broader significance than the financial penalty itself.
Google has already responded to European demands with a series of changes within its search engine, but the company claims that the new rules seriously undermine the quality of the product for European users. A spokesperson for the company stated that the changes introduced due to the DMA regulation represent “the biggest degradation of the Search product in history”.
Such an answer is not a surprise. Google has been warning for years that too aggressive regulation can lead to a worse user experience, slower feature development and more complicated interfaces. On the other hand, European regulators claim that Google’s dominance is the reason why competitors can hardly reach users, regardless of the quality of their products.
This is not the first major conflict between Brussels and Google. Since 2017, the European Union has fined the company several billion euros for abusing its dominant position in the areas of online shopping, the Android ecosystem and digital advertising. Just last year, Google was fined almost three billion euros for practices in the adtech sector.
However, the current case is particularly important because it represents a kind of test of the effectiveness of the DMA law. The European Union has been criticized for years that it succeeds in punishing large technology companies only after the market damage has already been done. The DMA should change exactly that approach and allow regulators to intervene much more directly.
In the background of everything there is also a wider geopolitical story. In recent years, the European Union has been trying to reduce dependence on American technology giants and at the same time create space for the development of European digital services and AI companies. Google’s dominance in online search and the Android ecosystem is often seen as an obstacle to that strategy.
At the same time, critics of the European approach warn that excessive regulation can slow down innovation and further distance Europe from the global AI and technology race currently dominated by American and Chinese companies. That is why the DMA is increasingly seen not only as a regulatory framework, but also as a political instrument with which Europe tries to define its own digital economy model.
If the penalty is indeed confirmed in the announced scope, it could be one of the most significant moments in the application of the DMA regulation so far and a signal that the European Commission intends to implement the new rules much more aggressively towards the largest technological platforms, reports Mashable.