Leaked letter reveals European Commission told Google to expect fines large enough to act as a deterrent in EU antitrust case
Context & Ripple Effects
This leak lands mid-arc in Brussels' first big confrontation with Google over Search: six weeks earlier, the New York Times reported Google could face a fine exceeding €6 billion if the Commission proved its antitrust case. The leaked letter goes further than the number — it shows the Commission explicitly framing the penalty around deterrence, not just compensation, and warning Google directly to expect as much.
First-order effects
- Google now faces a fine deliberately calibrated to hurt — sized against precedent rather than damages, with the Commission's own stated benchmark being penalties like the €1 billion it imposed on Intel in 2009, a bar sources said the Google fine could top when it landed two years later (EU fine for abusing search dominance).
Second-order effects
- The deterrence doctrine set here becomes the template for follow-on action: more than a decade later, the Commission is again moving against Google — probing whether it artificially inflated ad-auction clearing prices (new EU ad-auction probe) and planning another high triple-digit million euro fine over Search self-preferencing (planned fine in the 2025 probe).
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, EU enforcement against Google is not a one-off reckoning but a recurring operating cost: the same self-preferencing theory from this 2015-era case resurfaces in successive probes, meaning each fine functions less as closure than as the opening position for the next cycle.
The trend: European antitrust enforcement against Google has evolved from a single deterrence-sized fine into a rolling series of probes targeting successive layers of its business, from Search rankings to ad auctions.