EU Upholds Google’s 4.1B Euro Fine for Bundling Search With Android
upstart writes:
EU upholds Google's 4.1B euro fine for bundling search with Android:
Google has lost its latest battle with European Union regulators. This morning, the EU General Court upheld Google's record fine for bundling Google Search and Chrome with Android. The initial ruling was reached in July 2018 with a 4.34 billion euro fine attached, and while that number has been knocked down to 4.125 billion euro ($4.13 billion), it's still the EU's biggest fine ever.
The EU takes issue with the way Google licenses Android and associated Google apps like the Play Store to manufacturers. The Play Store and Google Play Services are needed to build a competitive smartphone, but getting them from Google requires signing a number of contracts that the EU says stifles competition.
The Commission zeroed in on three unlawful restrictions. First, Google bundles Google Chrome and Search with Android. The company requires Android manufacturers to sign a "Mobile Application Distribution Agreement" (MADA) contract, which says that manufacturers that want to include one Google product must include a large collection of them and make Google the default. There are even requirements for where icons and widgets should be placed.
The second unlawful restriction is the contract's "anti-fragmentation agreement," which says that anyone who creates a fork of Android, even as a separate product or under a different brand, will have their company's Google app license instantly revoked. The third issue concerns Google's revenue-sharing agreements, which give manufacturers adhering to all these rules a share of the Google search and Google ad revenue that a customer generates.
The EU Commission found that "the objective of all those restrictions was to protect and strengthen Google's dominant position in relation to general search services and, therefore, the revenue obtained by Google through search advertisements."
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