The European Commission has fined Alphabet €890 million (about $1 billion) for two separate violations of the Digital Markets Act — one for favoring Google's own services in search results, the other for blocking Android developers from steering users to alternative payment options. The company now has 60 days to change its policies for both Search and the Play Store or face further periodic penalty payments.

The larger of the two fines, €460 million, covers self-preferencing in Google Search. The Commission found that Google gave preferential treatment to its own Shopping, Hotels, and Flights services over third-party competitors in results pages. The second penalty of €430 million targets Play Store rules that prevented developers from freely directing consumers to alternative payment systems that may be cheaper than Google's own.

As part of the ruling, Google must treat third-party services in Search "in a fair and non-discriminatory manner," and it must allow Android developers to freely promote offers to users both inside and outside the Play Store.

The Commission announced the fines on July 23, 2026, more than two years after it first opened a non-compliance investigation in March 2024. A preliminary ruling followed in March 2025, and the Commission granted Google an extension in May 2026 after rejecting an earlier remediation proposal as "simply not strong enough."

What Google has already changed in Search

Before the fine landed, Google had already made and tested several changes to Search in an effort to comply with DMA rules. It removed the Google Flights widget for Search users in the EU and boosted links to third-party comparison websites through an updated results layout. Those changes predate the reimagined AI-focused search box Google introduced at its I/O conference in May 2026, which has also rolled out to EU users — meaning the Commission's non-discrimination requirements will now apply to a substantially redesigned product.

Google has pushed back hard on the EU's characterization of its Search product. In May, the company told Reuters that its compliance changes "represent the biggest downgrade in the product's history, creating a second-rate experience for Europeans to the benefit of a few self-interested complainants."

This is not the first self-preferencing penalty Google has absorbed in Europe. In 2017, the Commission fined the company €2.42 billion after finding it gave its comparison shopping service an illegal advantage over competitors under the EU's older antitrust rules.

The Play Store side of the ruling

On the Android front, Google has repeatedly objected to requirements that it open up app distribution, arguing that doing so creates security risks for users. The company repeated those objections after the Commission's preliminary finding, writing in a blog post last year that "the DMA is making it difficult to protect users from scams and malicious links on Android by forcing us to remove our legitimate safeguards that protect users' security and safety."

Despite the objections, Google did update certain Play Store terms following consultations with the European Commission and other experts, revising fees and restrictions on Android developers. The Commission says these changes "constitute good progress towards compliance."

Google faces a parallel reckoning over Play Store policies in the US. Fortnite publisher Epic Games successfully sued the company over in-app purchase fees, and Google will be forced to carry rival Android app stores inside its own storefront.

The financial ceiling and the regulator's framing

The DMA applies to the largest "gatekeeper" companies providing core digital services in Europe and obliges them to act fairly rather than stifle competition through market dominance. The statute caps fines at 10 percent of a company's global annual revenue — roughly $40 billion in Google's case, based on the $400 billion Alphabet reported for 2025. The €890 million penalty sits well below that ceiling, which leaves the Commission substantial headroom for the periodic penalty payments it has threatened if Google misses the 60-day compliance window.

Teresa Ribera, the Commission's executive vice-president for clean, just and competitive transition, framed the ruling in consumer terms: "The best products should succeed because they're better, not because they're owned by the company running the search engine. And European consumers have a right to be told by app developers where to sign up to the best offers, even when the app store owner does not get a cut. This is the promise of the DMA, protecting fairness, choice and innovation in digital markets for the benefit of all European citizens."

For publishers and comparison-site operators in travel, hotel and shopping verticals, the immediate question is how far Google's mandated non-discriminatory treatment will reshape visibility in EU results — especially now that the AI-focused search experience has reached European users and its ranking and citation behavior falls under the same obligations. Watch the next 60 days for Google's compliance filing and any follow-up enforcement moves from the Commission.