Google to face record EU fine over Android anti-trust issues

Reuters claims Google will be whacked with record fine in early July

Google is facing a record European Union antitrust fine over claims that it resorted to anti-competitive business practices to cement its dominance of the mobile operating system market with Android.

The penalty would exceed the €2.4 billion levied last year over accusations that its search engine unfairly favoured Google's own shopping and price-comparison services over that offered by rivals, abusing its near-monopoly of the online search market.

That's according to Reuters, whose sources claim that the European Commission is set to announce its decision in the week beginning 9 July.

The Commission will order Google to stop striking its Android licensing deals that mandate the use of Google apps if device makers want to offer the Google Play store pre-loaded on their smartphones.

While Android is based on Linux and comes with an open source licence, the apps available on the Google Play store give device makers no choice but to concede Google's demands.

Google, meanwhile, has vigorously fought the case, arguing that its Android business model has helped keep the cost of mobile devices low "and their flexibility high, while giving consumers unprecedented control of their mobile devices" in a 2016 blog posting that argued that the Android business model was a "model of open innovation".

The news comes just one month after the Financial Times reported that commissioner Margrethe Vestager would conclude that Google imposed illegal terms on Android device makers "which harmed competition and cut consumer choice"within a matter of weeks.

The fine, the FT speculated, could be as high as ten per cent of the turnover of Alphabet, Google's parent company. That would weigh in at $11 billion.

When Vestager opened the investigation in 2015, following a complaint from lobbying group Fairsearch, she 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."

She continued: "Our concern is that by requiring phone makers and operators to pre-load a set of Google apps, rather than letting them decide for themselves which apps to load, Google might have cut off one of the main ways that new apps can reach customers."

However, Google might argue that Vestager is a far from neutral adjudicant, having suggested in March that the American company should be broken up because of its dominance of the internet in European and the European online advertising market.