Google Has 60 Days to Redesign Search in Europe
The European Commission fined Google 890 million euros last week, and the number is the least interesting part. What follows the fine is a 60-day deadline to stop favouring its own services in search results, with daily penalties waiting if it misses. For anyone whose visibility depends on where things land on a Google results page, the deadline carries more weight than the cheque.
Two fines, two separate problems
Most coverage merged the total into one headline figure, which blurs what actually happened. The Commission issued two distinct non-compliance decisions on July 23.
The first, 460 million euros, covers self-preferencing in Google Search. The second, 430 million euros, covers Google Play, where the Commission found Google restricted app developers from telling their own customers about cheaper options elsewhere. Only the first one touches search visibility, and that’s the half that concerns anyone working in organic.
Both are firsts. The Digital Markets Act, the European Union’s rulebook for large platforms, came into force in 2022, and Google was designated a gatekeeper under it in 2023. Until last week, Brussels had never used the law against the company. It’s also the largest penalty issued under the act so far, though small next to the roughly 11 billion euros in earlier European antitrust fines Google has accumulated since 2017.
What self-preferencing looks like on the page
The finding itself is specific about behaviour rather than intent. Under the Digital Markets Act, gatekeepers can’t treat their own services more favourably in ranking than third-party ones, and they have to apply transparent, fair, non-discriminatory conditions to that ranking.
The Commission found Google gave preferential treatment to its own shopping, hotel, transport and sports services over comparable rivals. Not by ranking them slightly higher, but by giving them top-of-page placement with enhanced visuals and filters that competing services never got access to. A hotel comparison site could rank well and still appear below a Google hotel panel with pictures, prices and filter controls that no third party was allowed to build.
Teresa Ribera, one of the Commission’s executive vice-presidents, framed the principle plainly, saying the best products should win because they’re better rather than because the company running the search engine happens to own them.
The clock does the work, not the fine
Google can absorb 890 million euros without noticing. The pressure comes from what happens next. The Commission ordered both violations ended within 60 days, and if Google misses that, it faces periodic penalties of up to 5% of its average daily worldwide turnover. That’s the mechanism with teeth, because it compounds for as long as the problem persists.
Google may appeal, and its track record suggests it will. The Commission also acknowledged that Google has already started testing changes to how it displays search results and has updated its steering terms, calling the effort substantial progress. So the likely outcome is a redesigned European results page rather than a courtroom standoff, though the shape of that redesign is the thing nobody can predict yet.
If Google does pull back its own panels, space opens up above the organic results in Europe. Comparison sites, travel platforms and specialist search services are the obvious beneficiaries, since they’re the ones the decision names as having been pushed down.
The part the decision doesn’t cover
Read the decision and it’s about classic search results, the ranked links and the panels around them. It doesn’t address AI Overviews or AI Mode, which raises an obvious question that the Commission hasn’t answered yet.
An AI Overview is, structurally, Google’s own content placed above everyone else’s links. Whether that counts as self-preferencing under the same principle is an open question, and one that regulators will have to work through eventually. Nothing in last week’s decision settles it, so treat any confident claim about AI Overviews being next as speculation. The precedent exists now, which is different from the precedent having been applied.
Where the freed-up space goes
For agencies and brands outside those named verticals, not much changes immediately. If you weren’t competing with Google Shopping or Google Hotels for placement, the decision doesn’t rearrange your results page.
What it may do over time is give back some room. Every panel Google pulls back is space that returns to third-party results, and in Europe that could mean measurably more visibility for the sites underneath. Which brings it back to the same question that decides everything else. When a slot opens up, Google still has to choose which third-party site fills it, and that choice runs on the same ranking and quality systems it always has. Regulation can force Google to stop putting its own thumb on the scale. It can’t tell Google which of your competitors deserves the space instead.
So the work doesn’t change. Being the site with the authority, the original material and the earned references that make you the strongest third-party option is what turns a policy change into your traffic rather than someone else’s. That’s what link building and credible coverage have always been for, and a regulator opening up the page only makes the competition for those slots sharper.