The Digital Markets Act (DMA), a regulatory law, differs from traditional antitrust laws as its fines focus more on encouraging compliance rather than merely penalizing firms and are less shocking in amount. In 2025, when the Commission began issuing multi-million euro fines under the DMA, some ‘Big Tech’ opponents were critical. The Commission cited the brief duration of the conduct as a reason for the fines being much lower than the potential 10 percent of global turnover that the regulation allows. The latest fine for Google was just 0.22 percent of the annual revenue of Alphabet, Google’s parent company.
While revenue is always a cap and enforcers consider factors such as the severity of the infringement, it seems penalties might be somewhat arbitrary and possibly influenced by political factors. The Google penalty was made up of two fines (€460 million for favoring its own search results and €430 million for unfair practices with the Play Store on smartphones), conveniently totaling under €1 billion during tense transatlantic trade times.
European Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier refuted claims of political influence in the fining process, stating that the EU adheres to due process. Regnier explained that many objective criteria, like the seriousness and duration of the breach, as well as mitigating factors, help ensure proportional fines under all circumstances.
Fines under the Digital Services Act (DSA), the EU’s key content moderation law, also face challenges. For instance, the Chinese e-commerce company Temu argued that a €200 million fine imposed by the Commission in May was “disproportionate,” despite being well below the DSA’s maximum fine threshold of 6 percent of a company’s annual global revenue.
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