Brussels Prepares Biggest-Ever DMA Penalty for Google
A high triple-digit million euro penalty is expected before the summer break, in what would be the largest fine yet issued under the Digital Markets Act (DMA).
May 26, 2026 – 7:08 am
The European Commission is preparing to fine Google a sum running into the high hundreds of millions of euros for breaching the DMA, according to a Handelsblatt report on Monday. This would be the largest penalty ever issued under the bloc’s new tech competition regime.
The Commission’s case centers around the long-running complaint that Google favors its own services—particularly shopping, travel, and local search—when ranking results.
That investigation was formally opened in March 2024 as one of the first non-compliance probes under the DMA. Brussels concluded in early findings that Google’s ranking practices amounted to self-preferencing prohibited by Article 6 of the regulation.
A separate proceeding, initiated in November 2025, addresses Google’s alleged demotion of news publishers in search results.
According to Handelsblatt, the decision in the self-preferencing case is nearing completion and is expected to be announced before the Commission’s August recess.
The fine would surpass the €200 million penalty handed to Apple in April 2025 for App Store steering rules, previously the DMA record.
Under the DMA, the Commission has authority to impose fines of up to 10% of global annual turnover for first-time offenders and up to 20% for repeat violations. For Alphabet, that 10% cap would equate to approximately $35 billion based on their most recently reported revenues.
The proposed fine is at the lower end of the available range, which a European Commission spokesperson previously attributed to the Commission’s focus on securing compliance rather than maximum penalties.
Google has objected to the case on substantive grounds, describing the requested changes to its search product as “the biggest downgrade in the product’s history” and arguing that the proposed remedies will harm the user experience for European searchers without benefiting rivals or consumers.
The company intends to challenge any adverse decision in the EU’s General Court.
This case has an unusually lengthy history. The DMA, effective since March 2024, was designed for faster action than the older antitrust regime, which resulted in multiple multi-billion euro Google fines over a decade. A €2.4 billion Google Shopping penalty was upheld by the EU’s top court in 2024 after eight years of litigation. This DMA case has taken more than two years to reach the fining stage—a relatively swift pace compared to Brussels standards but still slower than anticipated by the legislation’s creators.
Other DMA cases are pending behind this one. A separate Commission process is poised to require Google to grant rival AI assistants equal access to Android as it provides for its Gemini assistant, with a binding decision expected by July 2026.