In July, the European Commission fined Google a record-setting €4.3
billion ($5 billion) for antitrust violations regarding its Android OS.
Now, Google's pushing back on that fine. "We have now filed our appeal
of the EC's Android decision at the General Court of the EU," the
company told Reuters. Google said back in July that it planned to pursue
an appeal and it argued at the time that its product has given
consumers more choice, not less, like the EC has claimed. "Android has
created more choice for everyone, not less. A vibrant ecosystem, rapid
innovation and lower prices are classic hallmarks of robust
competition," it said.
You can check out a more detailed breakdown of the situation here, but
here's what it boils down to. The Commission said in its decision that
Google violated its antitrust regulations in three different ways. It
required manufacturers to include Google Search and Chrome on their
Android devices, paid them to pre-install Search exclusively and
prevented manufacturers from selling devices with Android forks it
hadn't approved. The Commission said these actions "denied rival search
engines the possibility to compete."
"Google is entitled to set technical requirements to ensure that
functionality and apps within its own ecosystem run smoothly, but these
technical requirements cannot serve as a smokescreen to prevent the
development of competing Android ecosystems," Margrethe Vestager, the
EU's competition commissioner, said during a press conference in July.
"Google cannot have its cake and eat it."
Last year, Google was fined €2.42 billion ($2.72 billion) by the EC for
prioritizing its own comparison shopping feature over those of others, a
decision that the company has also appealed. Both cases are expected to
take years to wrap up.
https://www.geezgo.com/sps/42326
Join Geezgo for free. Use Geezgo's end-to-end encrypted Chat with your Closenets (friends, relatives, colleague etc) in personalized ways.>>
No comments:
Post a Comment