Google Eases EU Play Store Rules to Head Off Antitrust Fines

Alphabet’s Google has offered to overhaul key terms of its Play Store business in the European Union, proposing measures that would let app developers more freely steer customers to external websites and adopt a new tiered fee model. The concessions follow formal charges in March that the company breached the EU’s Digital Markets Act by limiting developers’ ability to inform users of cheaper offers outside the Play Store and by imposing what regulators called excessive service fees. In a blog post outlining the plan, Google said it would expand its External Offers Program in the bloc with lower and more flexible commissions, while cautioning that looser rules could expose users to security risks. The move is intended to avert further penalties after Brussels issued a warning this month; the EU can levy fines of as much as 10% of a company’s global annual revenue for repeated violations. Google has already accumulated more than €8 billion in EU antitrust fines over the past decade.