The highest European court rejects Google’s appeal and validates the sanction for anticompetitive practices linked to Android.
The Court of Justice of the European Union rejected this Thursday, July 2, Google’s appeal against the record fine of more than four billion euros imposed on it by Brussels in 2018, for abuse of a dominant position in the mobile phone ecosystem.
A clear rejection of Google’s appeal
“The appeal filed by Google and its parent company Alphabet (…) is rejected, thus confirming the sanction imposed for the abuse of Google Search’s dominant position in the context of the Android operating system,” announced the Court, based in Luxembourg. The Court, the highest court in the EU, thus rejected all the arguments formulated by the American technology giant, whether they relate to the merits of the case or to compliance with procedures.
The amount, originally set at 4.3 billion euros, was however reduced to 4.1 billion by the General Court of the European Union, which judges cases at first instance. This sanction, validated at first instance in September 2022, remains the highest ever imposed by the European Commission.
The Commission imposed this fine on Google after concluding that the group had forced manufacturers of phones and tablets using its Android operating system to pre-install its search engine, Google Search, and its Chrome browser, in order to eliminate competing services. The company was thus judged guilty of having abused the power of its Android system, which still equips nearly 70% of mobile devices in the world, according to the latest figures from the specialist firm StatCounter.
Google occupied “a dominant position in several markets in the Android ecosystem” and thus benefited from “network effects which allowed it to ensure that users resort to [son moteur de recherche] Google Search”. According to Advocate General Juliane Kokott, whose opinion was followed by the Court, “no hypothetical competitor supposedly as efficient could have found itself in such a situation”.
The Mountain View (California) group, for its part, argued that the EU had wrongly ignored its major competitor Apple, which favors its own services on its iPhones, such as the Safari browser. Google had also argued that downloading competing applications was accessible with a single click and that customers were in no way forced to use its products on Android. But the attorney general recommended in June 2025 to reject Google’s appeal, judging its arguments to be unfounded.
Responding to the ruling, a Google spokesperson said: “This ruling ignores the significant investments we have made to ensure Android remains open, interoperable and free. Regardless, we have adapted our agreements to comply with the original 2018 ruling, and we remain committed to continued innovation and openness for the benefit of our users, partners and developers.”
A context of European firmness
This emblematic case was one of the main disputes between Google and Europe. Last September, the Commission fined it nearly three billion euros for anti-competitive practices in the online advertising market.
Brussels also opened two new fronts in January concerning competition on Android and in search. The European executive wants to force Google to strengthen access of its operating system for mobile devices to artificial intelligence assistants competing with its own service, Gemini. At the same time, the Commission wants to force Google to share data from its search engine Google Search with its rivals. The group strongly opposes these procedures, and has warned that such measures would undermine the security of its systems and data protection, to the detriment of users.
