In a move that risks enraging the Trump administration, the European Commission has announced major antitrust enforcement decisions against Google and Apple.
The EU’s executive body on Wednesday said Google parent Alphabet had almost certainly broken the bloc’s Digital Markets Act, a year-old competition rulebook for Big Tech, in multiple ways. If it finalizes these preliminary findings, Google could be in line for fines that theoretically run as high as 10% of global annual revenues.
The commission also ordered Apple to comply with the DMA by making the iPhone more easily and effectively interoperable with third-party devices such as smartwatches, headphones, and TV sets. This is the first time the commission has given a company specific measures that it must take to comply with this law.
President Donald Trump last month threatened to lob tariffs at anyone who dares to fine or enforce tech rules against U.S. companies in ways that his administration thinks are discriminatory. (He has already triggered a tariff war with Europe and the rest of the world regarding steel and aluminum imports, and has threatened further tariffs on European alcohol.)
Vice President JD Vance has also hit out at European tech regulation, and Meta and Apple—both of which face separate EU antitrust decisions as soon as this month—have complained to Trump about being picked on in Europe.
The Commission’s preliminary findings regarding Alphabet’s DMA noncompliance are about two long-running issues.
The first relates to Google search results promoting other Google services, like shopping, hotel booking, and financial results, to the detriment of third-party competitors—either by putting the Google services at the top of the results, or by displaying them in eye-catching dedicated spaces. The EU already fined Google $2.7 billion for similar self-preferencing eight years ago, but now it has a new law to wield.
The second finding is about Google not allowing developers who distribute their Android apps through Google Play to tell customers about cheaper deals they can get off Google’s platform and freely steer them there. The commission also said Google is charging developers too much for onboarding new customers. Again, Google already received a $5 billion EU antitrust fine for Android abuses back in 2018, but that was about pre-installed services on Android phones; the newer case is specific to the rules laid out in the DMA.
“The two preliminary findings we adopt today aim to ensure that Alphabet abides by EU rules when it comes to two services widely used by businesses and consumers across the EU, Google Search and Android phones,” said competition commissioner Teresa Ribera.
As for Apple, the company will now have to heavily change its ways to comply with the DMA.
For example, Apple has long made life difficult for rival smartwatch makers by ensuring that users of their products can’t reply to notifications coming in from their iPhones. (Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky, who has just revived his discontinued smartwatch under the Core brand, wrote a blog post about his Apple frustrations just this week.)
Apple will now have to fix that, and it will also have to allow for easier pairing and better data connections with third-party headphones and virtual-reality headsets. Developers will also get new opportunities to integrate file-sharing and streaming capabilities in their iPhone apps. And Apple will have to give developers more transparent and timely information when they want to make their products and services interoperable with the iPhone and iPad.
“Today’s decisions wrap us in red tape, slowing down Apple’s ability to innovate for users in Europe and forcing us to give away our new features for free to companies who don’t have to play by the same rules,” Apple said in an emailed statement. “It’s bad for our products and for our European users. We will continue to work with the European Commission to help them understand our concerns on behalf of our users.”
Google, meanwhile, complained that the commission’s findings would “make it harder for people to find what they are looking for and reduce traffic to European businesses.”
The commission officials who announced Wednesday’s decisions took great care to imply that nobody was being treated unfairly on the basis of their American-ness.
Although Apple complained that it was being singled out by the commission’s latest move, Ribera stressed that the commission was “simply implementing the law” with its Apple decisions. Similarly, tech commissioner Henna Virkkunen emphasized that Alphabet’s alleged misdeeds “negatively impact many European and non-European businesses.”
That is unlikely to placate the U.S. leadership, whose response is now keenly awaited.
After all, Apple also claimed that the new interoperability requirements force it to give away its intellectual property to competitors. And Trump’s memorandum last month specifically said that rules designed to “transfer significant funds or intellectual property from American companies to the foreign government or the foreign government’s favored domestic entities” would trigger U.S. tariffs.
