The case underscores the broader challenge regulators face in overseeing the digital economy. By the time the authorities home in on an area deserving of scrutiny, the market may have moved on.

“Fast-moving markets are where competition law is most important,” said Jonathan Kanter, a partner at the law firm Paul Weiss and a former antitrust investigator for the Federal Trade Commission, who has worked for Google competitors including Yelp. But “when you have cases that are many years old, you’re fighting old battles instead of the next one.”

At the heart of the European Commission’s case was the question of whether Google had abused its power by forcing handset makers like Samsung, Huawei and HTC to make its Google Search and Chrome browser the default services on Android-based devices in order to gain access to other Google apps.

While Google gives Android away to handset makers, those companies must effectively pre-install 11 Google apps on their devices, giving Google’s products far greater reach and more users to click on its ads. The strategy has enabled Google to reach more than a billion monthly users for six products: search, maps, Gmail, YouTube, the Chrome internet browser, and the Google Play app and media store.

Now the European authorities are ordering Google to stop tying Google Search and Chrome to the Google Play store. In addition, antitrust officials said Google must stop providing financial incentives to handset makers and wireless carriers to favor its services, a practice the company stopped in 2014.

In another remedy, European officials ordered that Google must allow handset manufacturers to create their own versions of Android software, otherwise known as “forks.” Google had previously discouraged the rise of competing smartphone software based on Android by blocking manufacturers’ access to Google apps if they built devices using any alternative versions.

The case has parallels to a similarly significant action against Microsoft in the 2000s, when it was heavily penalized in Europe and the United States for using its power in the personal computer market to bundle in its own internet browser, boxing out its rivals. At the time, Google, a young upstart, was among those to complain about Microsoft’s practices.