India fines Google over anti-competitive Android practices

For as much as we’re all tied into Google’s ecosystem on our phones, how much of that is fully by choice, and what part might be the result of Google’s tight integration letting it promote its own services — even to the detriment of others? Google seems like it’s constantly under fire forsome vaguely monopolistic practice. The latest government to push back against Google for anticompetitive behavior is India, as the government imposes a hefty fine on the tech giant.

The Competition Commission of India hasslapped Google with a $161.9 million fine(viaTechCrunch). The regulator had been investigating Google for the last three and a half years, and says that making smartphone companies pre-install and feature prominently its entire ecosystem of apps “amounts to imposition of unfair condition on the device manufacturers,” and as a result is in violation of the law.

This applies to the Google Play Store, as well as to YouTube, Chrome, and other apps that partly keep their dominant status thanks to Google bundling them as apps on Android phones. According to the regulator, OEMs shouldn’t be forced toinstall Google’s range of appsas a requirement for accessing its Play Services APIs and other incentives. It’s unclear yet how Google will act in response — in a comment to TechCrunch, the company said it had yet to receive the order.

The Indian market accounts for a sizable fraction of Google’s worldwide user base, so action coming from a regulatory agency here could have a chance of actually affecting Google’s rhetoric and actions, especially if it’s joined by similar responses from other countries. Recently, Google lost an appeal to dismiss a €4.34 billion antitrust fine from theEuropean Union, which was handed down for the same reason — Google exploiting its advantage in the Android space to grow its own ecosystem of services.

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