On July 2, 2026, the Court of Justice of the European Union issued its final word on one of the most consequential technology antitrust cases in history. In Case C-738/22 P — Google and Alphabet v Commission — the court dismissed Google's last appeal and affirmed a €4.1 billion fine first levied by the European Commission in 2018. There is no further right of appeal. The finding that bundling the Google Play Store, Google Search, and Chrome as a condition of Android device licensing constitutes illegal self-preferencing is now settled EU law.
The timing matters for Turkey. The Rekabet Kurumu, Turkey's Competition Authority, has been running an active investigation into Google's Play Store payment practices since August 7, 2025. The CJEU's ruling is now the most authoritative global judicial statement on what kind of ecosystem control crosses into antitrust abuse — and it arrives while that Turkish proceeding remains unresolved.
What the Court Actually Found
The EU case originated with the European Commission's 2018 decision concluding that Google had abused its dominant position through three interlocking practices: requiring smartphone manufacturers to pre-install Google Search and Chrome as a condition of licensing the Play Store; providing revenue-sharing payments contingent on Search receiving exclusive home-screen placement; and blocking device-makers from selling handsets running alternative Android-based operating systems. The General Court upheld all three findings in September 2022 — slightly reducing the fine from €4.34 billion to €4.1 billion — and the CJEU has now closed that door permanently.
As set out in Court Press Release No. 93/26, the CJEU found that the General Court "did not err in law when assessing the anticompetitive effects of the pre-installation conditions laid down by the Android agreements." No detailed counterfactual analysis was required. The structure of dependency was sufficient to establish harm.
Turkey's Live Investigation
Turkey's probe — Decision 25-29/680-M, invoking Article 41 of Law No. 4054 on the Protection of Competition — focuses on a distinct but logically linked set of practices. The Rekabet Kurumu's preliminary Mobile Ecosystems Industry Review found reason to believe that Google requires app developers to use Google Play Billing (GPB) as the exclusive payment processor for in-app purchases, and prevents them from informing users that cheaper alternatives exist. These would constitute violations of Article 6 of Law No. 4054 — Turkey's statutory equivalent of the EU's Article 102 prohibition on abuse of dominance.
The theoretical link to the EU case is direct. Both rest on the same underlying structure: Google controls the only practical distribution channel for Android apps on devices that represent approximately 72 percent of the global mobile market. Developers who need that channel must accept its terms. The CJEU established that using this chokehold to mandate bundled products is illegal. Turkey's investigation asks whether using it to mandate a payment processor — and to silence developers who might tell users about cheaper alternatives — is the same thing. The CJEU's reasoning strongly suggests it is.
The Case for Intervention Is Real
It is worth stating clearly why this regulatory scrutiny is not overreach. Google Play Billing, before recent changes, extracted up to a 30 percent commission with no realistic exit for developers who needed Android distribution. App studios, fintech developers, and media companies absorbed costs that went directly to Alphabet because refusal meant delisting. The anti-steering restriction — preventing developers from even mentioning external payment options — compounds the harm by preventing market pressure from working: users remain unaware that cheaper options exist outside the Play Store. Turkish regulators are not manufacturing a grievance.
Remedy Design Matters More Than Fine Size
The more important question is whether enforcement produces durable market change or merely generates a penalty Alphabet can absorb. Google's settlement with Epic Games has already yielded real adjustments: from June 30, 2026, developers in the US, UK, and EEA can integrate alternative payment processors for in-app purchases. Google restructured its fee to 20 percent (plus an optional 5 percent only if developers choose Google's own billing system), and alternative app stores now have a formal pathway through the Registered App Stores programme.
Turkey's investigation was opened in August 2025, before these reforms took practical effect. The Rekabet Kurumu must now assess whether Google's global fee restructure adequately addresses Turkish developers' concerns, or whether Turkey requires jurisdiction-specific behavioral commitments. The authority's track record is instructive: its December 2024 decision fined Google approximately TL 2.6 billion (roughly $75 million) for self-preferencing in the advertising technology market. A further TL 355 million penalty followed in July 2025 for non-compliance with remedies from a prior Android investigation dating to 2017. Fines have mounted; structural change has been slower.
The Precedent That Now Travels to Ankara
The CJEU judgment in C-738/22 P does not prescribe a specific remedy for Play Store billing. What it does is establish — definitively and without further recourse — the principle that using a dominant distribution platform to impose take-it-or-leave-it terms on dependent markets constitutes abuse of dominance. Applied to the Turkish proceeding, this means the Rekabet Kurumu has strong judicial footing under its own national law to require that Google permit alternative payment processors and allow developers to disclose those options to users. Turkey is not bound by the EU's Digital Markets Act, but Article 6 of Law No. 4054 is capacious enough to reach the same destination: genuine developer choice rather than mandatory bundling dressed as platform policy.
The EU case took eight years to resolve. Turkey's regulators — and the app developers waiting on them — cannot afford to wait that long.