September 28, 2021
Google attracted the attention of EU antitrust authorities on Monday for ignoring rival Apple when it set its goal of getting Europe’s second-highest court to annul a record 4.34-billion euro ($5.1 billion) fine against its Android operating system.
The European Commission fined Google in 2018 for using Android since 2011 to thwart rivals and secure its dominance as the search engine of choice.
Regardless of the Court’s ruling, Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook will in future be obliged to change their business models to promote a level playing field for rivals, as proposed by EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager.
“The Commission shut its eyes to the real competitive dynamic in this industry, that between Apple and Android,” Google’s lawyer Meredith Pickford told the court.
He said Google’s dominance and the immense barriers it imposed on rivals led to “a virtuous circle for Google but a vicious circle for anybody else”.
Android, which can be used free of charge by device manufacturers, is used by 80% of the world’s smartphones and is the most prominent of the three European Union cases against Google on the basis of Android’s market power.
For more information, you may view the original story from Reuters.
For more information, view the original story from Reuters.
