EU prepares record fine for Google over Digital Markets Act violations

The European Commission is preparing to issue a fine against Google totaling several hundred million euros following an antitrust investigation, according to a report from German newspaper Handelsblatt citing sources within the regulator.

According to those sources, the decision will be announced before the summer break. The penalty would be the largest ever imposed under the Digital Markets Act, the EU regulation designed to limit the influence of the largest technology companies on the market.

The European Commission opened the investigation in March 2025 following complaints from market participants, who argued that Google was giving preferential treatment to its own services in search results, undermining competition.

Despite the scale of the upcoming fine, the European Commission has emphasized that its primary objective is compliance with the law rather than collecting financial penalties. Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier told Reuters that while negotiations to resolve the dispute remain ongoing, the regulator is prepared to move to the next stage of enforcement without hesitation. Earlier in May, the European Commission gave Google additional time to bring its search system into compliance with the DMA after the company's previous proposal was deemed insufficient.

Google has stated that it is working to resolve the disagreement but has criticized the strictness of European regulation. A company representative said that the changes Google has already implemented in its search product to meet DMA requirements have represented a significant step backward and have made the experience worse for European users. The case is far from Google's first confrontation with EU antitrust regulators. In September 2025, the company was fined €2.95 billion for abuses in the advertising technology market, and it has faced substantial penalties in earlier cases concerning Google Shopping and the Android operating system.