The European Union wants Google to stop its anti-competitive practices by its Android operating system. Google was first warned by the EU back in April this year, and now it could face 3 billion euros in fines for Android antitrust claims.
The European Commission issued claims about Google using its operating system, Android, to stay ahead of its rivals. The EU antitrust regulators are about to order the technology giant to stop its program, Alphabet, from paying smartphone manufacturers such as Samsung, LG, HTC and Sony to use the Android system to run their devices.
“We look forward to showing the European Commission that we’ve designed the Androids model in a way that’s good for both competition and consumers and supports innovation across the region,” said Google representatives on the issue.
How is Google violating anti-competition regulations?
Anyone who has ever used the internet knows what Google is. The multimillion technology enterprise was created in the United States in 1998 by Stanford students and from that moment on Google hasn’t stopped growing. It is specialized in internet-related services and products such as online advertising and search. Currently, Google has partnerships with thousands of companies as it offers diverse kind of services from Google Docs and Google Sheets used for work, email services with Gmail, time management platforms such as Google Calendar, Google Drive used as a cloud storage or social networks as Google+, among others.
However, one of the major Google successes arrived in 2008 with the Android, a mobile operating system designed for touchscreen smartphones and tablets. Android is the largest installed base of all operating systems worldwide. The majority of the smartphone manufacturers use the Android platform in their devices, so basically Google’s Android is the leader in the market. Its latest version the 7.0 Nougat was recently released on August 22.
But now the fact that most manufacturers use Android as the operating system of the smartphone might get Google into troubles with the European Union. It claims that Google is violating anti-competition regulations since they, by using Android, preinstall other Google products such as Gmail, Google Search, and Google Play store, leaving rivals little room to compete with that.
Google is facing a huge fine
According to the EU’ 150 pages document sent to Google last week, they demand the tech giant to stop their incentives and payments to smartphone companies in return for pre-installing Google products. The complaints started in 2013, by FairSearch, a company that feeling in disadvantage pushed the European Commission to investigate the matter.
The antitrust claims could result in a fine of up to 3 billion euros based on the revenue which the company makes from AdWords, play store purchases, Google Search product queries, and AdMob’s advertisements. The fine aims to ensure Google’s deterrence and stop the company from blocking off its competitors.
“It intends to set the fine at a level which will be sufficient to ensure deterrence.” Said the European Commission.
Source: Android Headlines