Europe's top court ended Google's eight-year legal battle Thursday, dismissing the company's final appeal against a €4.1 billion antitrust fine for using Android to block rivals. The ruling is the last word on the largest single penalty the European Commission has ever imposed on the search giant.
The Court of Justice of the European Union upheld the fine originally handed down in 2018, when regulators found Google forced phone manufacturers to pre-install Google Search, Chrome, and the Play Store while blocking them from using rival Android forks. A lower court trimmed the penalty from €4.34 billion to €4.1 billion in 2022, but Google pressed on with a final appeal.
"The appeal brought by Google and its parent company Alphabet against the judgment of the General Court is dismissed, thereby confirming the penalty imposed for Google Search's abuse of a dominant position in the context of the Android operating system," the Luxembourg-based court ruled. A Google spokesperson said the judgment "fails to recognize our investment to ensure Android remains open, interoperable and free." The company noted it adapted its agreements after the 2018 decision, added user-choice measures in 2021, and made more than 20 product changes after the Digital Markets Act took effect in 2024.
The €4.1 billion penalty is one chapter in a much longer story. Google has accumulated close to €11 billion in EU antitrust fines over the past decade across multiple cases. The Commission hit Google with a €2.4 billion fine in September 2024 for abusing its shopping-comparison service dominance, and a €2.95 billion penalty in September 2025 for favoring its own ad-tech products.
More are likely on the way. The Digital Markets Act now gives regulators additional tools to police Google's search results and app store practices, and the Commission has already opened investigations under the new framework.
Google argued during its appeal that the Commission underestimated competitive pressure from Apple's iOS and that the case was based on outdated market conditions. The CJEU rejected those arguments, ruling that the lower court had correctly assessed the anti-competitive effects of Google's Android agreements without needing a counterfactual analysis in every instance.
The fine itself has been sitting in an escrow account for years. With Thursday's ruling, that money is now bound for Brussels.
