As I’m sure you’ve heard, antitrust regulators in the European Union today fined Google $5 billion for abusing its power in the smartphone market. And they are requiring the search giant to make behavioral changes to prevent future abuse.

Looking over the complaint, I feel that the EU has adequately explained how Google has abused its market power, which derives from a monopoly in Internet search. It also addresses why Google did what it did: To ensure that its search monopoly would continue as the world transitioned from PCs to mobile. And Google, not coincidentally, now owns a near-monopoly in mobile devices too.

That said, Google’s response is smart: The search giant claims that Android creates more choice, not less. That assertion addresses what’s really important here. Not what happened. But how it impacts others. And Google claims there is no harm.

So let’s step through this.

If you think back to the now-classic industry precedent for this case—Microsoft’s antitrust issues in the United States, EU, and elsewhere—you can see the parallels. Microsoft, it was (correctly) alleged, attempted to leverage its Windows monopoly to enter new markets for web browsers (with Internet Explorer), music players and services (with Windows Media Player), and messaging (with Windows Messenger). This behavior was illegal because Microsoft had a monopoly.

The specifics, in some ways, are not all that important. What is important is that Microsoft’s behavior had far-reaching ramifications that negatively impacted virtually every relevant third party.

For example, Microsoft harmed PC makers with its secretive and protectionist licensing pacts, most infamously by punishing IBM for its Lotus software by delaying IBM’s access to Windows 95.

Microsoft also harmed application maker competitors by illegally bundling products and services with its dominant Windows OS and giving them an unfair advantage. And it did this while engaging in concerted FUD (“fear, uncertainty, and doubt”) tactics aimed at discrediting superior competing products and services.

And Microsoft ultimately harmed consumers by denying them choice overtly, and by squashing industry newcomers that might have brought fresh ideas to market.

(One might argue that many of Microsoft’s actions harmed developers, too. For example, Microsoft’s attempts at subverting Java and bifurcating the web with IE-specific technologies are classic examples of an aggressive “embrace and extend” strategy that furthered Microsoft’s strategic goals at the expense of developers.)

Antitrust works a bit differently in different locales. US antitrust law tends to be more about protecting consumers, for example, while the EU is very concerned about competitive fairness. But at a high level, this is really about harm.

And looking again at the new EU case regarding Android, the European Commission does cites multiple instances of harm.

Device makers are harmed by Google’s actions in multiple ways. They are forced to accept Google’s search service and web browser if they want access to the all-important Google Play Store, which is what makes an Android phone an Android phone. Smaller device makers are harmed by Google’s exclusive payments to the bigger device makers which exclusive bundle Google apps and services. And once device makers agree to Google’s onerous licensing terms, they can never release even a single device that deviates from those terms.

Wireless carriers are harmed by Google’s actions too, as Google’s secret payments to larger carriers which are all-in on Google’s products and services keeps them from growing and being more competitive.

“Google … harmed competition by significantly reducing incentives to pre-install competing search apps,” the EU complaint notes. “Furthermore, Google’s practices also harmed competition and further innovation in the wider mobile space, beyond just internet search. That’s because they prevented other mobile browsers from competing effectively with the pre-installed Google Chrome browser. Finally, Google obstructed the development of Android forks, which could have provided a platform also for other app developers to thrive.”

For its part, Google claims that Android creates choice, and that that choice ultimately benefits all of the interested parties. This is a reasonable defense, though I feel like it will not sway the legal requirement that it change its most onerous licensing terms. But then, it’s probably too late, anyway: With its search monopoly secure, and its mobile near-monopoly in fine shape, Google and the Android platform are poised for the future.

Which brings me to an interesting question that is related to harm. Are there any major differences between this new case about Android and the classic antitrust cases against Microsoft and Windows?

Why yes. Yes, there are.

Microsoft’s nascent offerings at the time of its antitrust infractions were very much created to protect the Windows monopoly and were, for many years if not forever, vastly inferior to the products and services that Microsoft feared and sought to harm.

But the Google offerings at the heart of this case—Google Search, of course, but also Chrome, Maps, Gmail, Google Calendar, and others—are routinely the best and most popular choices in their respective categories. That this is true on both Android and iOS, and on the web on desktop PCs, is doubly interesting. Consumers don’t just use Google products and services because they’re there. They use them because they prefer them.

Further, unlike its only real rival in the mobile space, iOS, Android is actually open. Users can configure different default apps for search, browser, assistant, phone, messages, camera, photos, music, and mail, none of which are possible on iOS. Apple, today, is competing in mobile as it did in desktop PCs. But Google has learned from Microsoft’s mistakes and has chosen open over proprietary. This is a key advantage of Android over Windows.

And all of this makes harm hard to prove.

That is, the EU has a rather classic argument to fall back on, in that Google is behaving as Microsoft once did by bundling products and services in order to maintain a monopoly. But in Google’s case, consumers very much prefer the products and services that Google has bundled. Indeed, they’ve routinely chosen them when they’re not bundled, as is the case on iOS. One of the biggest complaints about Windows phone, as you’ll recall, was that Google’s products and services were not available on that platform.

Looking at Google’s argument about choice—which one might characterize as being the opposite of harm—you’ll find some compelling data.

For example, device makers have found Google’s Android licensing terms so onerous that there are now “24,000 Android devices, at every price point, from more than 1,300 different brands, including Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Polish, Romanian, Spanish and Swedish phone makers.”

Developers have found the Android platform so onerous that there are now over 1 million apps available in the Google Play Store.

Consumers have found Android so onerous that it is now the most popular personal computing platform on earth with several billions of users. Those users have downloaded almost 100 billion apps from the Google Play Store. And some competing products, like the Opera Mini and Firefox web browsers, have been downloaded over 100 million times each. The UC web browser has been downloaded 500 million times.

“The free distribution of the Android platform, and of Google’s suite of applications, is not only efficient for phone makers and operators—it’s of huge benefit for developers and consumers,” the Google retort notes. “If phone makers and mobile network operators couldn’t include our apps on their wide range of devices, it would upset the balance of the Android ecosystem. So far, the Android business model has meant that we haven’t had to charge phone makers for our technology, or depend on a tightly controlled distribution model.”

Unfortunately for Google, Microsoft made the same types of arguments against its antitrust charges in the US and Europe. And it lost handily in both cases.

Fortunately for Google, the behavioral changes that the EU is asking for are not problematic, and will not, as Google puts it, “upset the careful balance that [it has] struck with Android.” Device makers should be able to license the Google Play Store on some devices, but not on others. Device makers should be able to choose their own default apps while still using the Google Play Store. Most will not. (Samsung, however? That might get interesting.) And Google’s policy of paying off the most popular handset makers and wireless carriers needs to stop.

The good news? Google obviously realizes this.

“We’ve shown we’re willing to make changes,” Mr. Pinchai notes in a passage that is obviously a hint at future concessions. “Rapid innovation, wide choice, and falling prices are classic hallmarks of robust competition.”

So Google will appeal, but I don’t feel it will drag out this case for too long. That was a classic mistake that Microsoft made, and its distraction during this time helped trigger a mass migration away from Windows and PCs and to the web and mobile devices. Google will learn from that and will settle this case, and perhaps even get a few concessions of its own. And the impact—across device makers, wireless carriers, developers, and users—will range from minimal to non-existent.

And that, folks, is a good thing.