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RUSSIA PERSPECTIVE
EU FINES GOOGLE OVER A BILLION FOR ABUSE OF DOMINANT POSITION
DOMINANT ANGLE
Moscow views the fine imposed on Google as a new episode in Brussels' regulatory crackdown on foreign tech, a sanction that the Russian press directly links to the European Union's budget deficit.
Dominant angle identified — does not reflect unanimity of this country’s media
ANALYSIS
Moscow, July 24, 2026. The European Commission imposed two separate fines on Google on Thursday, totaling 890 million euros (approximately $1 billion), for violating the Digital Markets Act (DMA). A fine of 460 million euros targets Google's favoritism towards its own services - shopping, travel - in search results, while a second fine of 430 million euros punishes the restrictions imposed on developers on Google Play, who are prevented from directing their users to cheaper offers elsewhere. European Commissioner for Digital Henna Virkkunen justified the decision: "The DMA must ensure a level playing field [...] we want to ensure there is competition."
As reported by Russian media, the case is presented as the latest episode in Brussels' crackdown on tech giants, coming just days after the Commission confirmed it wants to use a previous fine of 4.6 billion euros - imposed in 2018 for abuse of Android's dominant position - to help fill its budget deficit. According to Russian media, citing Politico, this payment would be equivalent to more than 2% of the EU's budget gap, a connection that fuels the interpretation in the Russian press that antitrust regulation has become a fiscal tool.
Google strongly criticized the decision. Its head of international affairs, Kent Walker, denounced a measure that forces the company to "remove real-time search features appreciated by Europeans," seeing it as "a degradation of the product driven by a small group of interested complainants" rather than a defense of competition. The company has 60 days to comply.
Russian media notes that this fine is part of a series: three days earlier, the Commission also imposed a fine of 550 million euros on the Chinese platform AliExpress, which was deemed unable to curb the sale of illegal products due to insufficient moderation. For the Russian press, this succession of sanctions against non-European players - American and then Chinese - illustrates Brussels' assumed stance towards foreign platforms, regardless of their origin, without any official comment being made in Moscow.
KEY POINTS
- Moscow views the recent fines imposed on Google, totaling 890 million euros (approximately $1 billion), as notable, with 460 million euros for favoritism in search results and 430 million euros for restrictions on Google Play.
- The Russian government notes that the European Commission confirmed its intention to utilize a prior fine of 4.6 billion euros (the Android case, 2018) to help cover its budget deficit, a payment equivalent to more than 2% of this deficit, as reported by Politico and cited by Russian media.
- Russia observes that three days before the sanction against Google, the EU imposed a fine of 550 million euros on the Chinese platform AliExpress for insufficient moderation against illegal products, according to reports from Vedomosti.
COGNITIVE BIASES IDENTIFIED
Budget framing: Moscow highlights the link between the fine and the EU's budget deficit, rather than the competitive arguments put forth by Brussels.
Preference for quoting Google: critical comments from Kent Walker are widely reported, without equivalent quotes from European competition law experts.
Low coverage of the VK/Max dispute: Russo-European tensions over app stores are not explicitly linked to the Google case in the selected articles.
SOURCES (2)
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