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The European Commission is expected to announce the first fine for search engine company Google as part of the Digital Markets Act (DMA), German financial newspaper Handelsblatt reports.
Citing two anonymous, high-ranking EU officials, the paper said the potential one billion euro fine will be announced on Thursday, and relates to two main proceedings concerning the abuse of market power.
The first case reportedly concerns whether Google favours its own services in online searches, while the second case reportedly centres on Google allegedly preventing app developers from advertising downloading options outside the Google Play Store.
The precise amount of the fine would be decided at a College of Commissioners which brings together the executive led by Ursula von der Leyen.
The Commission launched both proceedings in March 2024.
Google has not publicly responded to Handelsblatt’s reports, and the European Commission’s spokespersons service did not respond to Euronews’ request for comment at the time of publication.
The reported fine sits under the DMA umbrella, which requires all technology companies operating in the EU to participate in competition in a bid to give users more choice.
The DMA legislation been strongly criticised by US President Donald Trump’s administration in the past, with Washington previously accusing Brussels of unfairly targeting American companies.
The news comes days after the European Commission ordered Google to share search data with rival search engines from January 2027 and to open its Android operating system to competing AI services as part of DMA regulation.
At the time, the EU’s tech chief Henna Virkkunen said this will allow EU users to enjoy “greater choice” of services.
Google’s head of global affairs, Kent Walker, said the EU move risked “undermining vital privacy and security guardrails for millions of Europeans”.
Fines for violating the DMA can stretch as far as 10 percent of a company’s total global turnover.
Google’s parent company, Alphabet, generated a record annual turnover of $402.8 billion (€353.08 billion) in 2025.
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