The EU has fined search juggernaut Google €890,000,000 (about $1 billion) for anti-competitive behaviour. The penalty covered two offences, dubbed "self-preferencing" (€460 million) and "anti-steering" (€430 million), whose names describe Google's unlawful activities. 𝘚𝘦𝘭𝘧-𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘧𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘪𝘯𝘨 refers to Google's practice of giving its own products and services better or more prominent billing than everyone else's. Self-preferencing falls under what Americans generally refer to as "anti-trust laws," regulations applied in free-market economies aimed at preventing rich, powerful and manipulative businesses from suppressing competition and undermining choice in the market. (The word "anti-trust" in this context comes from the 19th century, when the US legislature acted to regulate the creation of so-called corporate trusts, by means of which large companies could quietly band together into cartels powerful enough to manipulate the market, crush competitors, and thereby control prices. Outside North America, the term "anti-competitive" is now usually used instead.) 𝘈𝘯𝘵𝘪-𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 refers to Google Play rules that forced Play Store apps to pay fees for presenting ads and offers within the app. The EU noted that, "While Google can receive a fee for facilitating the initial acquisition of a new customer by an app developer via Google Play, the level of the steering-related fees charged by Google and the length of the charging period for these fees went beyond what is considered compliant with the Digital Markets Act." Teresa Ribera, head of the EU's delightfully named Commission for Clean, Just and Competitive Transition, summed up the reasons for the fine very simply by saying, "The best products should succeed because they’re better, not because they’re owned by the company running the search engine." Google, of course, thinks that the whole thing is a stitch-up, and its President of Global Affairs (he's a lawyer, and that really is his job title) has apparently insisted that the anti-steering judgement will "dismantle safety protections on Google Play." That's a bold claim from a company that dismissed vendors of Android security software outright, calling them "charlatans and scammers" back in 2011 (anti-malware protection, suggested Google's director of open source software at the time, was pointless given the security baked into Google itself), and whose head of security insisted, back in 2014, that the majority of Android users "do not need to install anti-virus and other security apps to protect them." Today, it seems, Android users and app creators alike not only need the security provided by Google's own Google Protect tools, but require those tools on terms and with settings decided by Google itself.