EU’s €890 Million Google Fines Double Down on the DMA’s Failures, Auer Says
BRUSSELS (23 July 2026) — The European Commission’s €890 million in fines against Google under the Digital Markets Act extend an enforcement approach whose earlier remedies have imposed measurable costs on European consumers, while the promised competition benefits remain speculative, according to Dirk Auer, director of competition policy at the International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE).
The Commission fined Google €460 million for favouring its own shopping, hotel, transport and sports services in search results. It imposed another €430 million fine for limiting app developers’ ability to direct users towards purchases outside Google Play.
The Commission acknowledged in the same announcement that Google’s recent changes represent ‘substantial progress’ towards compliance.
‘The Commission fined Google nearly a billion euros while crediting it with substantial progress’, Auer said. ‘That captures the problem with the DMA. Companies often learn what compliance requires only after regulators decide they have failed’.
Earlier DMA changes have already made Google Search less useful in Europe, Auer said. Removing integrated features increased searches for mapping services by 21% without sending more traffic to rival providers. The changes also cut hotels’ direct bookings through Google Hotel Ads by roughly one-third, benefiting Booking.com, itself a designated gatekeeper.
‘Search engines create value by ranking information and giving users direct answers’, Auer said. ‘A map, hotel listing or sports score may reduce clicks to an intermediary while giving users a better result’.
The Commission has also signalled that it may apply the same principles to Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode.
‘A search engine cannot be neutral about relevance, placement or presentation because those choices define the product’, Auer said. ‘The Commission can replace Google’s judgement with its own, but it cannot eliminate those choices’.
The Google Play ruling also gives too little weight to the services that app-store fees support, including fraud detection, refunds, dispute resolution, security reviews and developer tools. Apps obtained outside curated stores are more than 50 times as likely to contain malware.
The Commission accepts that Google may charge developers when Play helps acquire a customer. It nevertheless found that Google’s fees exceeded what the DMA allows without providing a clear public benchmark.
‘That amounts to rate regulation by hindsight’, Auer said. ‘Developers cannot use Google’s distribution, security and customer-acquisition services, move the payment elsewhere and assume the platform’s contribution ended at download’.
Auer added:
‘The DMA keeps producing worse search results, weaker security and more regulatory uncertainty. If the Commission is serious about European competitiveness, it should ask why a law promoted as pro-competition keeps making digital services worse’.
To arrange an interview with Auer, contact Jim Fellinger at [email protected].
About ICLE
The International Center for Law & Economics is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research center working with a roster of more than one-hundred academic affiliates and research centers from around the globe. ICLE scholars promote the use of law and economics methodologies to inform public policy debates.