European Union Fines Google Over $5 Billion in Anti-Trust Violation
posted Friday Jul 20, 2018 by Scott Ertz
Over the past few years, Google's experience in Europe has not been positive. At every turn, the individual countries and the European Commision itself have continuously done things to make their business model nearly impossible. In 2014, the EU wanted to break up the company, while Spain passed a law that caused them to shut down Google News in Spain. The EU also fought to enforce pre-GDPR rules.
The biggest challenge the company has faced has been surrounding Android, the company's mobile operating system. In 2014, Google implmeneted policies restricting when a device manufacturer could and could not include the Google Play Store on their devices. If a manufacturer wants to use the Store, they must also pre-install a dozen other Google apps onto their devices. For example, if you check out a Samsung flagship phone, you will see 2 assistants (Google Assistant and Bixby), two web browsers (Google Chrome and Samsung Internet), two messaging apps and more. This is because Samsung wants to include their own products, but also must include Google's.
In 2016, the EU began an investigation into whether this policy violated EU antitrust laws. This week, the results came in, and Google received a $5 billion fine for taking advantage of their position as the OS developer to force manufacturers to promote their other services. In particular, the Commision believes that Google Search has maintained its top spot largely because of Android rules.
As of right now, the company has 90 days to change its policies to come in line with EU laws. Of course, the question remains, "What will change for Android?" The Play Store policies have been responsible for the slow ending of the old Android fragmentation problem, where every manufacturer had a special variant of Android and you never knew if an app would work on any particular device. By ending this policy, it is possible that we will return to a highly fragmented environment where apps don't work and everything is in question. It's also possible that, so long as Google provides access to Google Play and Google Play Services, Android variants won't be the problem they were previously.
What we do know is that nothing will change any time soon. Google has vowed to appeal both the verdict and the fine, which means that changes won't be coming too quickly. When they do come, it will likely be in the form of not requiring the additional services to be bundled with handsets, but likely only in Europe. So, if you live outside of the EU, chances are you will not see any changes at all.
