Google shrugs off $5.1 bn fine with big earnings; makes $3.2 bn in profits

European authorities took their best swing, but it appears that Google hardly felt it.

Less than a week after the European Union fined Google a record $5.1 billion for abusing its dominance in the smartphone market, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, said on Monday it had already absorbed the cost of the fine and still made $3.2 billion in profits in its latest quarter.

Alphabet’s stock rose 3.5 percent in after-hours trading, and some analysts recommended the company’s shares. With the regulatory issue settled, they said, Google could get back to focusing on selling ads across the internet.

“It’s like a delivery company having to pay for a parking ticket,” Brian Wieser, a Pivotal Research analyst, said of the penalty, which Alphabet accounted for in the second quarter. “It’s not a meaningful fine in the context of the size of this company.”

The European Union’s previous record fine was also aimed at Google, a $2.7 billion levy it imposed last year for unfairly favoring its comparison-shopping service in its search results. Google booked that charge in the same quarter a year ago — and still posted a $3.5 billion profit.

More substantive than the fine are the changes that will come to the company’s Android software, which backs 80 percent of the world’s smartphones. European authorities ordered Google to stop effectively requiring phone makers in Europe to install Google’s search engine and Chrome internet browser on their devices in order to use the Android software.

Such a change could mean fewer people using Google’s search engine on their phones, which would undercut an advertising business that is fueled by users clicking on ads in mobile search results.

But it is Google that is responsible for crafting a remedy, and it will have much incentive to propose one that limits the impact on its business. After Google complied with last year’s European Union’s charges related to its shopping service, competitors complained that its solution did little to reduce the harm to their businesses.