Google Charged With Abusing Android Market Position In EU

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The European Union has brought charges against Google accusing the search giant of abusing its position in the Android market. Antitrust regulators have said that requiring phone manufactures to install Google Search and Google Chrome denies consumers a wider choice and hurts innovation. This case is going to end up being a big deal for Google as the company raked in around $11 billion dollars (last year) in ad revenue from Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Search. Google’s primary source of revenue has always been advertising and collecting metrics and data on the users that are using their services. The EU also charged Google with giving financial incentives to manufactures for pre-installing their services and software on their devices.

“A competitive mobile Internet sector is increasingly important for consumers and businesses in Europe,” European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said in a statement.

“We believe that Google’s behavior denies consumers a wider choice of mobile apps and services and stands in the way of innovation by other players,” she said.

“We look forward to working with the European Commission to demonstrate that Android is good for competition and good for consumers,” Google’s general counsel Kent Walker said.

Reuters reached out to several of Google’s competitors including Mozilla, Microsoft, Apple, and Opera but none were available for comment. Google did respond in a short statement saying, “Android was a remarkable system based on open-source software and open innovation.” Regarding the charges of abusing Android’s market position, Google has twelve weeks to respond to the allegations. FairSearch is the lead complainant in the case and has said that Google is hindering development of new versions that could compete with Android.

This is shaping up to be a long fight in EU courts and it will be an interesting fight to watch and see the outcome. What do you think of the EU charges against Google saying they’ve abused Android market position? Let us know in the comments below or on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.

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[button link=”http://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-google-antitrust-idUSKCN0XH0VX” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: Reuters[/button]

Last Updated on January 23, 2017.

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