BRUSSELS, July 5 -- For eight years, every Samsung phone sold in Europe came with a deal Google had made before it ever left the factory: you want the Play Store, you pre-install Search. You want Chrome on the default bar. You sign agreements barring anything that might compete with our Android. Hundreds of millions of devices, billions of search queries, all shaped by contracts European regulators said were illegal from the day Google wrote them.

On July 2, 2026, Europe's highest court agreed, for the last time. The Court of Justice of the European Union dismissed Google's final appeal in Case C-738/22 P, confirming a fine of €4.125 billion that can no longer be challenged in any court anywhere. The penalty, roughly $4.7 billion a...