Don’t Expect Big Changes from Europe’s Record Google Fine

European regulators took a big swing at Google Wednesday for abusing the dominance of its Android mobile operating system, fining the company €4.34 billion ($5 billion) and ordering changes to Android designed to put Google rivals on a more level playing field. But it’s not clear that the fine or the operational changes will have much effect.

“Google has basically won,” says Maurice Stucke, cofounder of the Konkurrenz Group and a law professor at the University of Tennessee. “They already dominate mobile. Just think about the number of apps, like with Google Play and the like. There’s no way you’re going to have another operating system that is going to threaten that. Bing invested, gosh, billions of dollars in its search engine, and it still hasn’t really made a significant dent.”