The European Commission fined Google €890 million ($1 billion) on July 23 for two separate breaches of the Digital Markets Act: self-preferencing its own services within Google Search, and restricting app developers on Google Play from directing consumers to cheaper purchase channels outside the platform. The Commission issued a €460 million fine for the search self-preferencing conduct and a €430 million fine for the Play Store steering restrictions, and ordered Google to end both practices.
This is a distinct enforcement action from Google's separate settlement with Russia's competition regulator earlier this week over Android restrictions — together the two cases show regulators on different continents converging on the same structural complaint: that Google's control over both the operating system and the marketplace layer lets it steer commercial outcomes in its own favor. For boards at any platform business with a comparable two-sided structure — an operating system, marketplace or search layer paired with owned services — the DMA's self-preferencing and steering theories are now a tested enforcement template, not a novel legal theory.
Google had already lost an appeal earlier this year against a separate €4.5 billion EU fine over Android's dominance, meaning the Commission's DMA enforcement is layering on top of legacy antitrust exposure rather than replacing it. Directors of platform companies with EU exposure should treat the DMA's compliance orders — not just the fines — as the more consequential element: Google must now restructure how Search and Play surface competing options, a change with revenue implications well beyond the headline penalty.
Source: BBC News
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