Google Search and its Play Store app marketplace are suspected of breaching the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), according to preliminary findings by EU Commission enforcers. The DMA applies to tech giants, including Alphabet (Google’s parent), and violations can attract sanctions of up to 10% of global annual turnover.
The EU’s investigation found that Google is breaching the DMA by giving its own services more prominent treatment in search results and preventing app developers from freely steering consumers to other channels. The commission suspects that Google’s dominance in search is being used to unfairly compete with rival aggregators and search sites.
Google has made changes to its business in response to the DMA coming into force, but the Commission does not believe these changes have gone far enough. Aggregation and search sites claim that Google’s new approaches amount to an attempt to circumvent the DMA ban on self-preferencing by the search giant.
The EU’s preliminary findings are two-fold: one concerns Google Search, where the commission believes Google is breaching the requirement not to treat its own services more favorably than rivals. The other finding relates to Google’s Play Store, where the EU suspects Google of preventing app developers from steering consumers to better offers outside of the Google-controlled ecosystem.
Google has responded by claiming that changes to its business will hurt consumers and businesses, and hinder innovation. However, the commission emphasizes its focus on creating a culture of compliance with the Digital Markets Act. The outcome of the investigation remains uncertain, with possibilities including non-compliance decisions and fines.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/19/google-search-play-store-falling-foul-of-digital-markets-act-rules-says-eu