On 23 July 2026 the European Commission fined Google €890 million for Digital Markets Act violations — €460 million for favouring its own search services, €430 million specifically for preventing Android app developers from directing users to cheaper payment options outside Google Play. It’s the first DMA penalty of this size against Google, and the Commission has given it 60 days to end the restrictions or face ongoing penalties of up to 5% of worldwide turnover.
The Play Store half of the ruling is the part that matters for anyone building or commissioning a mobile app. “Steering” — telling a user inside your app that they can pay less by going to your website — has been technically restricted or buried behind friction on Android for years, mirroring Apple’s equivalent App Store rules. This fine, arriving three months after Google opened its Play catalogue to third-party US app stores and started cutting service fees for developers using external billing, is the clearest signal yet that the regulatory pressure pushing both major platforms toward genuinely open payment steering isn’t slowing down.
For founders weighing app economics, that matters beyond the headline. A platform where you can legally tell users “pay 15-30% less on our website” changes the calculation on whether a native app, a web app, or both makes sense for a given product — and it changes what “app store fees” should mean in a build budget in 2026 versus two years ago.
So what
If you’re scoping a new mobile product, this is worth factoring into the commissioning conversation now rather than after launch: steering rules, alternative billing support, and platform fee structures are moving targets across both iOS and Android, and the right architecture decision today depends on where those rules land, not where they’ve been. That’s exactly the kind of platform-strategy question we work through with clients before writing a line of code — see how we approach iOS & Android development, or get in touch if you’re weighing up platform and payment strategy for a new build.