The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has dismissed Google’s final appeal against the €4.7 billion fine that the European Commission imposed on it in 2018 for anti-competitive practices involving Android. It is the highest penalty ever imposed by the EU on a single company, and now it is final: Google has no more avenues left to appeal it.
The European Commission accused Google of forcing phone manufacturers such as Samsung, Xiaomi or LG to preinstall Chrome and its search engine if they wanted to use Android, as well as paying major manufacturers and carriers not to install competing search engines. According to Brussels, these practices suffocated competition for more than a decade, preventing alternatives such as DuckDuckGo or Bing from having a real chance of reaching users. The European court has confirmed that all of this violates the European Union’s competition rules.
And what does this mean for the average user? In the short term, little: Google already had to change the way it does business in Europe after the initial fine, and now Android phones in the EU show a search engine choice screen when they are set up for the first time. But the ruling sends a clear signal to big tech: the European Union is serious about competition. With the new Digital Markets Act (DMA) already in force, cases like this set an important precedent for future investigations against Apple, Meta or Amazon. The era of “get locked into my ecosystem or get out” practices has its days numbered in Europe.
— Marta, for intermittent intelligence.
