The advocate-general of the European Court of Justice has upheld a fine of €4.124 billion ($4.75 billion) against tech giant Google that was imposed by the European Commission in July 2028.

The original fine was €4.343 billion ($5 billion), which was reduced to €4.124 billion in September 2022 after Google appealed before the General Court of the European Union. Google next appealed to the Court of Justice.

But in a press release last week, advocate-general Juliane Kokott said: “Google abused its dominant position by imposing anticompetitive contractual restrictions on manufacturers of mobile devices and on mobile network operators.”

Her remarks are not legally binding and it is now down to the judges at the top court to give a final ruling, but it is unlikely judges will disagree with the advocate-general’s findings.

According to the decision, there were three different counts of anti-competition behavior by Google which pushed rivals out of the markets.

First, Google has been accused of giving Google Play Store licences to rivals only after they first pre-installed Google Search or Google Chrome.

Second, under the licence agreement, manufacturers “had to undertake not to sell devices equipped with versions of the Android operating system not authorized by Google.”

Third, Google told manufacturers and network operators they would receive a grant if they agreed not to install another search engine from any of Google’s rivals on any of their devices for a certain duration of time.

“Google pursued the objective of protecting and strengthening its dominant position in relation to general search services and, therefore, the revenue obtained by Google through search advertisements, at a time when the importance of the mobile internet was growing significantly,” the Court has said.

No compromise

The EU, under its Digital Markets Act, has started a number of probes into major US tech giants for potential non-compliance with local rules since March 2024.

Senior leadership and owners at Google and other US tech firms heavily invested in and lobbied for Donald Trump in the last presidential election, in the hope that he will protect them against aggressive EU regulation. In January this year, sources told the Financial Times EU regulators were scaling back ongoing probes against US tech giants in the aftermath of Trump’s re-election as president.

There was an expectation that the likes of Google, which has now been fined close to €8 billion ($9.22 billion) by EU regulators over the past decade, will benefit from this.

However, the advocate-general’s remarks have totally dismissed any hope that the Commission will compromise on its rules, whatever the political consequences may be.

Google also received a separate fine of $2.6 billion from the EU in 2017, which was also upheld by the European Court of Justice last year.

In that case, regulators had accused Google of misusing its market hegemony and giving unfair preference to its own shopping recommendations against rival platforms.

And there has been scrutiny in other parts of the world too. In January, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said it will look into how Google’s position “impacts consumers and businesses including advertisers, news publishers, and rival search engines.”

The investigation has been launched under the the new digital markets competition regime which came into force on January 1, 2025, the CMA said at the time.