A record fine, and a pattern
On July 23, 2026, the European Commission issued two non-compliance decisions against Google under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), fining the company a combined €890 million — €460 million for self-preferencing its own shopping, hotel, transport and sports results in Google Search, and €430 million for restricting how app developers steer Google Play users toward cheaper purchase channels outside Google's own payment system (European Commission). It is the largest single DMA penalty issued to date and the first against Google under the 2022 law. The Commission has ordered Google to end both practices within 60 days or face periodic penalty payments of up to 5% of its worldwide annual turnover (gHacks).
Google was designated a gatekeeper for Search in September 2023; the Commission opened its non-compliance investigation in March 2024. Sixteen months of investigation produced a fine — and, notably, a concession from Brussels that Google is already testing changes to both practices that regulators consider "substantial progress toward compliance" (gHacks). Punish the violation, credit the in-progress fix: that combination is becoming the DMA's signature move, and it says as much about the law's design as it does about Google's conduct.
Two distinct theories of harm
The Search decision targets self-preferencing: the Commission found Google gives its own shopping, hotel, transport and sports results more prominent placement than comparable third-party offerings, even though Article 6(5) of the DMA requires gatekeepers to rank third-party services on "fair and non-discriminatory" terms. The Play Store decision targets anti-steering: Google restricted app developers from freely telling users about — and completing purchases through — alternative distribution channels or payment methods, and the fees it charged for permitted steering exceeded what the Commission views as compliant levels.
This is not Google's first brush with EU competition enforcement over shopping-comparison self-preferencing — the theory echoes the Commission's 2017 Google Shopping antitrust case — but it is the first time the conduct has been punished under the DMA's faster, ex-ante gatekeeper framework rather than a multi-year Article 102 investigation. That speed is precisely the point of the law.
The steelman: why ex-ante enforcement exists
The strongest case for the DMA is that traditional antitrust moved too slowly to matter. The original Google Shopping case took seven years from complaint to ruling, then more years of appeals, while the market structure it addressed calcified. By the time a remedy arrived, switching costs and network effects had made the underlying dominance nearly permanent. Gatekeepers with search-ranking or app-store control occupy choke points that ordinary competition cannot dislodge on its own — a consumer cannot "shop around" for a different default search ranking algorithm. Given that, a regulator moving in months rather than years, with a statutory list of prohibited conduct instead of a case-by-case harm test, is a defensible response to a genuine market-power problem. Developers who cannot tell their own customers about a cheaper price outside an app store are a real constituency with a real grievance, not a hypothetical one.
Where the proportionality argument bites
The trouble is that the DMA's speed comes from replacing case-specific harm analysis with a presumption of guilt for anyone on the gatekeeper list, and the compliance bar keeps shifting after the fact. Google has been iterating on Search result formats and Play Store steering terms since the DMA took effect in March 2024; the Commission's own statement credits "substantial progress" while fining the company anyway for the conduct predating that progress. That is a coherent legal position — non-compliance during the investigated period is still non-compliance — but it means gatekeepers cannot design toward a fixed target. Compare the €890 million Google penalty to the Commission's first DMA fines, €500 million against Apple and €200 million against Meta on April 23, 2025, also both followed by 60-day compliance windows (European Commission). Three gatekeepers, three different obligations, three fines within fifteen months — each one arriving after the fact, with the compliant version of the product effectively defined by post-hoc Commission judgment rather than by rules firms can build against in advance. That is a governance cost, not just a compliance cost, and it falls hardest on exactly the kind of ambitious product experimentation that keeps European consumers getting improved services.
What to watch
Google has said it may challenge the decision in the EU courts, which under the DMA's own design does not suspend the 60-day compliance clock. The real test is whether the redesigned Search rankings and Play Store steering terms Google ships in the coming weeks survive a second Commission review, or trigger the 5% turnover penalty machinery. If gatekeepers face repeat enforcement even after visible, good-faith redesign, the DMA will have proven itself not a one-time market correction but a standing tax on operating a large platform in Europe — a cost innovative firms will increasingly price into whether they launch new features there first, or last.