Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has cleared the deck for a huge antitrust fight. The technology giant is separating its European shopping unit and allowing rivals to bid for ads. That frees Google up to battle European regulators over claims that the company uses its Android operating system to dominate online search.

The European Commission fined Google $2.7 billion this summer after determining that the company had acted abusively in promoting its online shopping service over those of others. The regulator also added the prospect of a fine of 5 percent of Google’s daily revenue each day if the company did not fix the problem by Thursday.

Currently, rival comparison-shopping sites can buy space on top of Google search pages and display photos of relevant goods and links to retailers. Competitors have complained that this forces them to pay money to what they say is a search monopoly, thus violating the spirit of competitive markets. The fix offered by Google appears to address the complaint that it was unfairly promoting its own services.

Alphabet will proceed with its appeal. That is important, as the idea that a dominant company cannot favor its own services at the expense of rivals is contentious and could lead to future cases against Amazon, Facebook and others.