The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has dismissed an appeal filed by Google and its parent company, Alphabet, thereby upholding the multibillion-euro fine imposed for abusing Google’s dominant position through its Android operating system.

The case dates back to 2018, when the European Commission concluded that Google had abused its market dominance by requiring manufacturers, through pre-installation agreements and licensing conditions, to pre-install Google Search and the Chrome browser on Android-powered mobile devices. The Commission found that these practices constituted a single and continuous infringement of EU competition law and imposed a total fine of €4.34 billion, of which Alphabet was jointly liable for €1.92 billion.

The General Court of the European Union later upheld the finding that Google had committed a single and continuous infringement but partially annulled the Commission’s decision regarding revenue-sharing agreements that required certain manufacturers and mobile network operators to exclusively pre-install Google Search across a predefined portfolio of devices. Following that adjustment, the fine was reduced to approximately €4.125 billion.

In its ruling, the EU’s highest court rejected Google’s appeal and confirmed the revised fine imposed by the General Court.

The CJEU held that the General Court made no legal errors in its assessment of the anti-competitive effects of Google’s Android pre-installation agreements. It ruled that the court was entitled to consider the full economic context—including revenue-sharing agreements—without systematically conducting a hypothetical “counterfactual” analysis to establish an abuse of dominant market position.

The court also agreed that the General Court correctly found a status quo bias favoring pre-installed applications and concluded that Google and Alphabet had failed to prove that user preferences or the superior quality of their services alone explained consumers’ behavior.

Furthermore, the CJEU upheld the Commission’s assessment of Google’s Android licensing agreements, finding that proving abuse of dominance does not require demonstrating that only equally efficient competitors could have been excluded from the market. Given the unique characteristics of digital markets, the court agreed that Google’s practices were capable of restricting competition and raising barriers to entry.

The court also upheld the findings regarding Google’s anti-fragmentation agreements, which restricted manufacturers from marketing devices running incompatible versions of Android. According to the judgment, these agreements limited the commercial viability of alternative Android versions and reinforced Google’s dominant position. The court found that a counterfactual analysis was unnecessary because the anti-competitive effects had already been sufficiently established.

In addition, the CJEU rejected Google’s objective justifications for the anti-fragmentation agreements and confirmed that the General Court was entitled to maintain the finding of a single and continuous infringement, despite partially annulling certain aspects of the Commission’s original decision. The remaining conduct, the court said, still formed part of the same anti-competitive strategy.

Finally, the Court confirmed that the General Court had properly exercised its authority in determining the amount of the fine, finding that its reasoning was sufficiently detailed and that all procedural safeguards—including Google’s rights of defense—had been fully respected.