Google and the European Commission are discussing how the company will change its products to remedy the conduct behind two antitrust decisions that together produced a fine of about 890 million euros in July.
The Commission confirmed to Reuters on October 14 that consultations on remedies have begun. Google has started adjusting the way search results are presented and the way it charges developers on Google Play, and the regulator said it is assessing compliance and seeking the views of market participants.
The two decisions covered different parts of the company’s business. The larger penalty, 460 million euros, concerned self-preferencing in search results. The smaller one, 430 million euros, concerned anti-steering provisions on Google Play, where developers were restricted in how they could tell users about payment options outside the store.
Remedies in digital markets cases are difficult because the conduct is often the product. Changing how search results are ranked means changing the business that generates advertising revenue, and separating ranking from the services that are promoted is a design problem as much as a legal one. The Commission’s role is to judge whether the changes remove the advantage rather than to specify the engineering.
Anti-steering remedies are more tractable and more consequential for developers. If an app can tell users that a subscription costs less on the publisher’s website, the store’s commission on that transaction disappears. Google has adjusted its fee structures in several jurisdictions in response to regulation and litigation, and each adjustment is watched by developers calculating the difference between the store price and the direct price.
The consultation with market participants is the mechanism that gives the process credibility. Competitors and complainants can describe how the changes affect them, and the Commission can require more if the responses show that the advantage persists. The companies that brought the complaints in the first place are also the ones best positioned to explain why a remedy has not worked.
Google has criticized the decisions and has warned that its search results for European users will become worse as a result of the changes. That argument has been made by every large platform facing remedies, and regulators have generally responded that a degraded product is not a defense if the advantage being removed was the source of the quality difference.
The timing runs alongside other European proceedings. Brussels has been examining the company’s advertising technology business and its treatment of news publishers, and the Digital Markets Act has created a separate set of obligations with their own compliance deadlines. A remedy negotiated in one case sets expectations for the others.
The financial dimension is smaller than the principle. A penalty of 890 million euros is a fraction of the company’s annual profit, and Google has set aside funds for regulatory outcomes of this size. What matters more is the operating change, which persists after the fine is paid and shapes the products users see.
Developers on the Play store are most directly affected. The changes Google has already made to its fee structure include lower rates for some transactions and different terms for alternative billing, and the details determine whether a small publisher can afford to take payments directly. Those terms are also being litigated in the United States, where a court order has required changes to store rules.
Analysts said the practical test is whether the adjustments change what European users see when they search, and whether independent developers report that they can market subscriptions outside the store without retaliation. Both are measurable, and both will be described in the market feedback that the Commission collects.
Advertising technology is where the money is, and the remedies under discussion are narrower than that business. Search self-preferencing affects how shopping results, local listings and travel services are displayed, and it determines whether users reach a comparison site or purchase through Google’s own interface. That difference is worth billions of euros annually to the companies on the other side of the practice.
European courts have given the Commission latitude in choosing remedies, and they have also required that the measures be proportionate and that the companies be heard. Google has appealed the July decisions, which means the remedy negotiations are running in parallel with litigation that could reduce or annul the fines. The company can comply with remedies and continue to contest the findings that produced them.
The experience of the shopping case is the closest precedent. A decade ago the Commission ordered changes to how shopping results were presented, and the remedy has been criticized since by complainants who argued that it produced a paid auction rather than the result they wanted. The Commission has said it has learned from that experience by consulting the market before accepting a set of changes.
What has not been disclosed is the timetable for concluding the remedy discussions, the specific changes Google has made so far, or whether the Commission has found any of them insufficient. The answers will arrive as formal decisions, and in the meantime the products will continue to change under an agreement nobody outside the process can see.
