European Competition Commission finalising antitrust charges against Google

Google may soon be facing antitrust charges in EU for its comparison shopping service and is being investigated on whether the way it handles Android use in third party phones constitutes of unfair trade practice. Politico reports requests from lawyers for documents from competitors of Google is a sign that charges are going to be framed, and notes that Google is at most liable to pay up 10 percent of parent company Alphabet’s annual revenue. The process has started with a statement of charges against Google, that Google can respond to. If the European Commission is not satisfied with the reply, then the antitrust litigation will proceed. Google’s comparison shopping service is under scrutiny to check if it has been hindering competition by artificially placing their own service in a more prominent location. The statement notes that Google’s first attempt at a comparison shopping service, Froogle failed, whereas Google Product Search and Google Shopping succeeded. A suggested remedy by the European Commission is that Google should apply the same penalties to its own service that it applies to competition, and not give any preferential treatment to its services. A separate formal investigation against Android was also opened at the same time. The purpose of the investigation is to check if Google has been hindering the proliferation of rival operating systems, applications or services. There are three focus points of the investigation. Whether Google has been forcing device manufacturers to install only Google’s applications on Android, whether Google has taken steps to make sure that manufacturers do not use a forked version of Android, and if Google has been killing competition by bundling Google applications together in Android implementations.