It is the largest Fine imposed on a company in the history of E.U and unfortunately, it came upon a well known Tech giant.
Recently for abusing the Android operating system’s dominance in the smartphone market the EU watchdog’s decision came and Google was fined a record €4.3 billion ($5.1 billion US dollars) the largest fine imposed on a company in E.U history.
Margrethe Vestager, the European Union’s competition chief, Said that Google used Android’s dominant market position to strengthen its lead in search, a practice that has been deemed illegal in the EU.
And hence Google has been accused of:
- Forcing Android phone manufacturers to preinstall Chrome and Search as a prerequisite for including the Play Store app
- For ensuring that Google Search is the exclusive pre-installed search app on mobile devices by making payments to larger phone manufacturers and mobile carriers.
- preventing phone manufacturers from installing versions of Android that weren’t already pre-approved by Google, despite Android being an open source software.
That’s not all a third antitrust case against Google is also still open in the EU, which alleges the tech giant for holding dominance in the online advertising industry.
The ruling against Google stipulates that the company will need to unbundle its Chrome and Search apps from Android, which may significantly change the free business model the tech giant has been pursuing with the mobile operating system.
Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, has defended the company’s decision to bundle the apps with the operating system, stating in a blogpost, that Android users were free to remove any pre-installed apps.
Google has been given 90 days to cease all illegal practices or face additional fines of up to 5% of Google’s parent company Alphabet’s global turnover.
It is only last year that Google was penalized by the European Commission with a $2.7 billion fine for lowering the ranking of competitor shopping comparison tools to promote its own.
Sources/references
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