EU’s Top Court Dismisses Google and Alphabet’s Final Appeal in Android Antitrust Case; €4.125bn Fine Stands

The European Union’s highest court on Thursday dismissed Google and parent Alphabet’s final appeal in the bloc’s Android antitrust case, leaving in place a 4.125 billion euro ($4.1 billion) fine and cementing one of the EU’s biggest competition penalties against a technology company.

The ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union, based in Luxembourg, is the final appellate step under EU law in the long-running case. At its core were Google’s Android-related agreements with device makers and mobile operators, including requirements to pre-install Google Search and Chrome to obtain a license for the Play Store, restrictions on devices running unapproved Android forks, and some revenue-sharing deals tied to not pre-installing rival search apps.

The case began with a European Commission decision on July 18, 2018, which found that Google had abused a dominant market position and imposed a 4.342865 billion euro fine. The EU’s General Court, a lower tribunal, ruled on Sept. 14, 2022, that most of the Commission’s findings should stand. But it annulled part of the decision related to certain revenue-share agreements and reduced the penalty to 4.125 billion euros. Thursday’s judgment in Case C-738/22 P, Google LLC and Alphabet Inc. v European Commission, leaves that revised amount intact.

In a press release, the court said: “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.” In plain terms, the court backed the lower court’s broader way of looking at the market, saying it was entitled to assess the full economic context rather than run a hypothetical alternative scenario in every part of the case. It also endorsed the finding that pre-installed apps benefit from a “status quo bias,” meaning users are more likely to stick with default options, and said proving abuse in these digital markets did not always require showing that equally efficient rivals were pushed out. The court also found that the General Court had properly recalculated the fine and that Google’s procedural rights were respected.

The judgment matters beyond the size of the penalty. It closes one of the EU’s most important cases over how a dominant company can use contracts, defaults and app placement to protect its position in mobile search. It also reinforces the legal basis for EU competition enforcement in digital platform cases, especially those involving mobile ecosystems, pre-installed apps and the power of default settings.