The European Commission is today moving closer to issuing its largest-ever fine under the Digital Markets Act, with sources inside the Brussels body telling Germany's Handelsblatt newspaper that a penalty in the high triple-digit million euro range against Alphabet's Google is imminent. The decision, which has been delayed for months amid internal disagreementand pressure from Washington, is expected to be announced before the summer parliamentary recess.

The news carries significant implications for digital advertising and search markets. A fine of this scale - one that, according to Handelsblatt sources, would exceed the €500 million imposed on Apple and the €200 million levied against Meta under the same regulation - would represent a new high-water mark for DMA enforcement. It would also mark the culmination of proceedings that have dragged on well beyond the statute's intended timelines, frustrating industry groups and regulators alike.

What the case is actually about

The investigation centres on self-preferencing in Google Search - specifically, the practice of giving Google's own vertical services more prominent placement in search results than competing alternatives. The Commission officially launched proceedings in March 2025, though the underlying compliance questions date back to March 2024 when DMA obligations became legally binding for designated gatekeepers.

A concrete example: when a user searched for a flight, results from Google Flights were formatted and displayed more prominently than those of rival booking services. According to Handelsblatt, Google has already made concessions on several of these points - which is precisely why the Commission is proposing a fine below the maximum allowable threshold, rather than the full 10 percent of annual global revenue that the DMA permits.

The maximum penalty threshold matters here. Alphabet's annual revenue for 2024 was approximately $350 billion. Ten percent of that would be roughly $35 billion. A high triple-digit million euro figure - likely somewhere between €700 million and €999 million - represents a fraction of that ceiling, but would still be larger than any previous DMA fine.

Alongside the financial penalty, the Commission has flagged an additional dimension: its dissatisfaction with how Google's own AI Overviews feature functions within Search. Google uses its Gemini language model to generate these summaries, which appear at the top of search results pages. According to Handelsblatt, the Commission views this as another form of self-preferencing - privileging Google's own AI infrastructure over third-party content and rival services. Google has submitted proposals for modifying AI search behaviour, but those proposals have not gone far enough for Brussels regulators.

A case delayed by geopolitics

What makes this story unusual is the reason the fine took so long to arrive. According to reporting by Der Standard on May 26, 2026, sources indicate that the proceedings were internally complete some time ago but that Commission President Ursula von der Leyen delayed announcing a penalty to avoid further antagonising US President Donald Trump.

The geopolitical backdrop is not subtle. When the Commission imposed a €2.95 billion fine on Google for advertising technology violations in September 2025, Trump responded immediately on Truth Social, calling the fine "very unfair" and threatening retaliatory measures, characterising EU penalties against US technology companies as de facto tariffs. He had previously warned the Commission that such fines would be met with countermeasures. The September 2025 fine itself set a record at the time, and Trump's reaction demonstrated that the political cost of enforcement had risen sharply.

According to Der Standard, the current fine decision is occurring shortly after the conclusion of a transatlantic trade agreement - described in reports as a "hard-won customs deal" whose ink had barely dried. The timing creates an awkward diplomatic context for the Commission. Internal pressure from member state capitals, particularly those concerned about trade relations with Washington, appears to have contributed to the delay.

Süleyman Zorba, digital policy spokesperson for the Austrian Greens, pushed back against that posture in a statement cited by Der Standard. "It is high time that the EU rigorously enforced its digital laws," Zorba said. "Fines must reach a deterrent level, otherwise companies like Google have no reason to sustainably change their services."

The Commission's stated position

European Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier, in an emailed statement reported by Reuters on May 25, 2026, said the Commission is more interested in securing compliance than imposing penalties. "Even with our negotiations on future solutions, we will not hesitate to move to the next steps as soon as possible," Regnier added.

That framing - compliance over punishment - is consistent with how the Commission has characterised DMA enforcement more broadly. The regulation was designed primarily as a behavioural tool, not a revenue mechanism. Fines are meant to compel change, not to function as a form of taxation on large platforms.

Google's own public position follows a familiar pattern. According to Reuters, a company spokesperson stated: "The changes we've already made to Search under the DMA represent the biggest downgrade in the product's history, creating a second-rate experience for Europeans to the benefit of a few self-interested complainants."

That framing - portraying compliance as harm - has been a consistent part of Google's public communications since the DMA came into force. In its September 2025 consultation response, Google claimed DMA compliance had degraded services and resulted in €114 billion in losses for European businesses.

How we got here

The DMA became applicable in May 2023 and designated six technology companies as gatekeepers, including Alphabet. Obligations became legally binding in March 2024. The Commission opened non-compliance proceedings into Google Search within weeks of that deadline.

In November 2024, Google announced more than 20 modifications to its European search functionality, initially tested in Germany, Belgium, and Estonia. A coalition of over 20 European price comparison websites criticised those changes as insufficient. By March 2025, the Commission had issued preliminary findings that Alphabet may be violating Article 6(5) of the DMA in Google Search - the provision specifically prohibiting self-preferencing by designated gatekeepers.

The pace of enforcement drew increasing criticism from industry. In March 2026, eighteen European industry organisations wrote directly to Commission President von der Leyen demanding a formal non-compliance decision before March 25, 2026 - the two-year mark since proceedings opened. That deadline passed without action. The coalition, spanning travel, music streaming, publishing, broadcast media, startups, and consumer groups, noted that the Commission was already approximately 12 months past the statutory benchmark for adopting such a decision.

In February 2026, Reuters reported that Google was preparing to test changes that would give rival vertical search services more prominent placement in European results for hotels, flights, and restaurants, with top-ranked competitors shown by default. The timing coincided directly with mounting pressure over the impending fine.

In April 2026, the Commission adopted separate preliminary measures in case DMA.100209 that would require Google to share detailed search data with competing online search engines on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms - covering query data, view data, click data, and ranking data. A public consultation on those measures ran until May 1, 2026, with a binding decision expected by July 27, 2026.

Why the fine alone may not be enough

A recurring argument in DMA enforcement discussions is that monetary penalties, however large, do not fundamentally change the incentive structure for a company of Alphabet's size. Angela Mills Wade, Executive Director of the European Publishers Council, made this point explicitly after the September 2025 ad tech fine: according to her statement, "a fine will not fix Google's abuse of its adtech," and she called for measures that change behaviour at the structural level.

The EU Court of Justice upheld a €2.4 billion fine against Google in September 2024 for the Google Shopping case - a ruling that affirmed the Commission's approach to self-preferencing under traditional competition law, years before the DMA even existed. That case took roughly seven years from opening to final judgment. The DMA was designed to move faster.

Whether the compliance picture improves after this latest fine remains to be seen. The Commission has several additional tools at its disposal. Article 24 of the DMA allows interim measures during ongoing proceedings. Article 31 allows periodic penalty payments calculated daily. Repeated violations can trigger fines of up to 20 percent of global revenue and, in cases of systematic non-compliance, the Commission can impose structural remedies - including potentially forcing the sale of business segments or banning certain acquisitions.

What this means for search advertising markets

For advertisers and publishers operating in European markets, the practical stakes are concrete. Research from hospitality technology company Mirai found that hotels in DMA regions experienced a 30 percent drop in clicks and a 36 percent decrease in direct bookings compared to non-DMA markets. Google Flights' market share in Germany reached 22.2 percent in the same period cited by the industry coalition - illustrating the direct commercial impact of search placement in specific verticals.

The question of AI Overviews and the Gemini-powered search layer adds a new dimension that previous DMA enforcement did not address. The Commission's concern, according to Handelsblatt, is that deploying a proprietary language model to generate the dominant summary display in search results constitutes a new form of the same self-preferencing problem. Google has offered remedies, but those have not satisfied the Commission.

This matters for digital marketers because the AI search layer increasingly determines which sources get cited, summarised, and displayed above organic results. AI Overviews now reaches more than 2.5 billion monthly active users globally, and AI Mode has surpassed one billion monthly users. The regulatory question of how that layer is constructed - and whose content it draws upon - is not abstract. It shapes visibility, traffic, and commercial outcomes across every sector that depends on search as an acquisition channel.

The DMA's prohibition on self-preferencing was written before generative AI became a core component of search interfaces. How the Commission applies that principle to Gemini-powered summaries will shape the regulatory framework for AI search across Europe for years. The answer may arrive before the summer recess, alongside a fine that, whatever its size, signals that Brussels has not stepped back from enforcing its digital rulebook.

Timeline

Summary

Who: The European Commission, led by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, is preparing a fine against Alphabet's Google. The case involves Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier and sources inside the Brussels body. US President Donald Trump forms part of the political backdrop, having previously threatened retaliatory measures against European tech enforcement.

What: A fine in the high triple-digit million euro range - the largest ever imposed under the Digital Markets Act - for violations of the DMA's prohibition on self-preferencing in Google Search. The case covers Google promoting its own vertical services, including Google Flights, in search results above competing alternatives, and extends to concerns about the role of Google's Gemini model in AI Overviews. Google has made partial concessions, which is why the fine is expected to fall below the maximum 10 percent of global revenue.

When: The investigation was officially launched in March 2025, though DMA obligations became binding in March 2024. The fine decision has been internally complete for some time but delayed for geopolitical reasons. According to Handelsblatt and Reuters, the announcement is expected before the summer parliamentary recess, likely by July 2026.

Where: The proceedings take place at the European Commission in Brussels. The enforcement covers Google Search as it operates across European Union member states, with the DMA applying to Alphabet as a designated gatekeeper. The political pressure originates partly from Washington, creating a transatlantic dimension to the case.

Why: The DMA was designed to prevent large technology platforms from using their dominance in one market to crowd out competitors in adjacent markets. The Commission's position is that Google has continued to privilege its own services - including AI-powered search features using Gemini - in ways that disadvantage rival services and reduce the contestability of digital markets. The delay in announcing the fine reflects the difficulty of enforcing European digital law during a period of heightened US-EU trade tensions, with the Trump administration having previously characterised European tech fines as disguised tariffs.

Share this article
The link has been copied!