BRUSSELS — The European Union fined Google a record $5 billion Wednesday for forcing cellphone makers that use the company's hugely popular Android operating system to install Google apps.
The EU said the practice restricts competition and reduces choices for consumers.
The fine, which caps a three-year investigation, is the biggest ever imposed on a company by the EU for anticompetitive behavior.
Google immediately said it will appeal. Android has "created more choice for everyone, not less," Google CEO Sundar Pichai tweeted.
In its ruling, the EU said Google broke the rules when it required mobile phone makers to pre-install the Google Search and browser apps if they wanted to use Google's app store. Google also paid big producers to exclusively pre-install the Google Search app.
EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said "companies must compete on their merits," playing by rules that favor consumers and open markets, and not restrict competition.
Vestager said that given the size of the company, the 4.34 billion euro fine is not disproportionate. The penalty is on top of 2.42 billion euro fine ($2.8 billion) that regulators imposed on Google a year ago for favoring its shopping listings in search results.
The latest fine is well within Google's means. Its parent company, Alphabet, made $9.4 billion in profit in the first three months of the year and reportedly had over $100 billion in cash reserves.
But the EU's insistence that Google change its practices could have a bigger impact than the fine itself.
"The important thing is not to be distracted by the size of the fine. What is important is that Google has to change its abusive behavior," Rich Stables, CEO of the rival search engine Kelkoo, told The Associated Press.
Android is an open-source operating system that Google lets cellphone makers use for free. As a result, it is the most widely used system, beating even Apple's iOS. The EU says Google has market share exceeding 90 percent in most European countries.
Read Thursday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.