Google Fined €890M Under EU's Digital Markets Act

The European Commission has fined Google €890 million for violating the Digital Markets Act (DMA), marking the first time the company has been penalized under the bloc's landmark tech competition law. The ruling, issued on July 23, 2026, covers two distinct complaints.

The breakdown is fairly surgical: Google owes €460 million for steering users toward its own services inside Google Search, a practice regulators call self-preferencing. The remaining €430 million covers restrictions Google placed on app developers, specifically rules that prevented those developers from pointing users toward cheaper payment options outside the Google Play ecosystem.

The Google Play anti-steering ruling has direct operational implications for crypto exchanges and fintech apps distributed on Android. Previously, if a crypto platform wanted to tell its mobile users that they could avoid in-app purchase fees by subscribing through a browser, Google's policies made that conversation difficult or outright prohibited.