Overview
- The European Court of Justice rejected Google's appeal on Thursday, July 2, 2026, and made the roughly €4.1 billion penalty final and legally binding.
- The EU Commission's original 2018 finding targeted three practices: forced preinstallation of Google Search and Chrome, bans on selling devices with unapproved Android forks, and revenue‑sharing deals conditioned on excluding rival search engines.
- Google says it changed the challenged contracts after the 2018 decision and criticized the ruling as overlooking its investment in keeping Android open and free.
- The decision narrows parts of Google's Android business model and could prompt private follow‑on lawsuits and stricter enforcement under EU rules such as the Digital Markets Act.
- While the fine is large in absolute terms, it is small relative to Google's ad revenue, so analysts expect the ruling's main effects to be contractual and operational changes across the Android ecosystem.