Bad news for Google in Europe after ratify the 2018 decision for abuse of dominance with Android and a fine of more than 4,000 million euros. Today, the General Court of the European Union announced that it confirmed “largely” the decision, although it slightly reduced the amount of economic punishment that Mountain View residents should face.
The initial antitrust investigation uncovered several points that served to substantiate the European Commission’s allegations against Google. After all, the Californian company forced Android mobile device makers to pre-install their apps to access the Play Store and even paid them, as well as mobile operators, to support their products. In addition, he banned brands from releasing models with third-party operating systems based on Android.
In 2018, Android’s share of the European market was already 80%. This, according to regulators, gave Google a free hand to use “illegal tactics” by which it restricted the actions of competing companies.
As published by the General Court of the European Union in recent hours, most of the original charges stood. However, the final amount of the fine that Google must incur has been slightly changed. Authorities have changed their stance on income-sharing schemes between Californians and Android phone makers and no longer see them as an abuse of power. In this way, economic penalties increased from 4,343 million euros to 4,125 million euros.. The story doesn’t change too much, despite a cut of about 5%, of course.
Google and Europe continue the eternal battle
Those in Mountain View still have the option appeal the decision to the Court of Justice of the European Union. In any case, they must wait two months and ten days to consider this possibility. This means that the resolution of this crossover between Google and European regulators may still be a long way off. After all, four years have passed, and the parties involved are still debating.
Let’s not forget, in addition, that Google and the EU have been in a legal battle for years beyond this particular case. In 2016, for example, the European Commission fined a company more than 2 billion euros for abuse of dominance with its Shopping service. A punishment that was only confirmed in November 2021.
Over the past year, regulators have also brought Californians — and Meta — to the attention of their advertising business, and even raised potential conflicts over their use of Google Assistant.
Coming back to the Android abuse of dominance allegation, Google expressed dissatisfaction in a statement. “We are disappointed that the court did not reverse this decision completely. Android has provided more opportunities for everyone, not less, and supports thousands of successful businesses in Europe and around the world,” the company said.
Source: Hiper Textual
