The European Commission is likely to issue its decision and impose a fine on Google next week for abusing its dominant position in the market in relation to the Android operating system. Although not yet announced, any fine imposed may be as much as US$11 billion, as the Commission can impose a fine as large as 10% of Google's parent company Alphabet's global turnover.

Google has been firmly in the Commission's sights for the last eight years, with three investigations initiated against the company during that period. The Commission first targeted Google with an investigation into comparison shopping.  That investigation concluded in 2017 with a €2.4 billion fine against Google, when the Commission determined that Google was unfairly directing consumers away from other online stores, and towards Google-favoured retailers. The Commission is also investigating Google regarding whether the company unfairly banned competitors from websites that used its search bar and adverts.

Most significantly for Google, the Commission commenced an investigation of the company's alleged abuse of dominance in relation to Google’s Android mobile operating system and Google’s mobile applications in April 2015. Android is the mobile operating system used in the majority of the world's smartphones. The Commission alleged that Google had imposed licensing conditions for Android that prevented smartphone producers from promoting alternatives to Google's own apps. The Commission believes that Google, by pre-installing Android smartphones with Google services, is stifling competition and consumer choice.  At the time that the investigation was announced, the EU's competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager said "We believe that Google's behaviour denies consumers a wider choice of mobile apps and services and stands in the way of innovation by other players, in breach of EU antitrust rules". The Commission officials want smartphone producers to be free to preinstall whatever apps they wish to on their devices. In short the complaint focuses on the home screen of a smartphone with the Android operating system. If you are a smartphone producer and you want to use Android, you have to position the Google search bar right in front of the smartphone user as soon as they unlock their device. You also have to display the Google Play app store and Google's Chrome browser prominently on smartphones.

In April 2016, the European Commission published a formal statement of objections with a preliminary finding that Google had abused its market power. The Commission made three charges in its statement of objections. First, that Google obliged Android phone producers who use the Google Play store (where users download apps) to preinstall Google as the default search engine. Second, that Google prevents phone producers who install Google Play and the Google search engine from selling devices that run on competing services that have adapted the underlying Android open-source coding. This acts as a deterrent for phone producers to choose non-Google apps that run on adapted versions of the Android operating system. Third, the Commission said that Google employed "financial incentives" to ensure that phone producers preinstalled Google search (only) on devices.

Google denies any wrongdoing.  The company argues that the Commission should include Apple's operating system (IoS) as a rival to Android in its definition of the market.  Kent Walker, Senior Vice President and General Counsel for Google, said that "to ignore competition with Apple is to miss the defining feature of today’s competitive smartphone landscape". However, the Commission has excluded Apple in its definition of the market because the company does not licence its IoS operating system for use by its rivals.

The Commission's focus on Google shows that regulators are willing to take on tech giants such as Google to check apparent abuse of dominance.  However, commentators and rivals of Google do not believe that fines and regulations will make much of a difference. Google's Android has about 80% of the smartphone operating system market globally. Google also has as much as 90% of the internet search market. Given these kind of statistics, it is not clear that smartphone producers will soon move away from their reliance on Google's Android.

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