Google began a five-day hearing yesterday in a top EU court to appeal a record antitrust penalty imposed for stifling competition through the dominance of its Android operating system.
The company is fighting a 2018 decision from the European Commission, the bloc’s top antitrust enforcer, that resulted in the 4.34 billion euro (US$5.07 billion) fine — the largest Brussels has ever imposed for anticompetitive behavior.
It is one of three antitrust penalties totaling more than US$8 billion that the commission hit Google with between 2017 and 2019. The others focused on shopping and search results, and the California company is appealing all three. While the penalties involved huge sums, critics point out that Google can easily afford them and that the fines have not done much to widen competition.
In its original decision, the European Commission said that Google’s practices restrict competition and reduce choices for consumers.
Google plans to argue that free and open-source Android has led to lower-priced phones and spurred competition with its chief rival, Apple Inc.
“Android has created more choice for everyone, not less, and supports thousands of successful businesses in Europe and around the world. This case isn’t supported by the facts or the law,” the company said as the hearing opened at the European Court of Justice’s General Court.
Android is the most popular mobile operating system, beating Apple’s iOS, and is found on four out of five devices in Europe.
The European Commission ruled that Google broke EU rules by requiring smartphone makers to take a bundle of Google apps if they wanted any at all, and prevented them from selling devices with altered versions of Android.
The bundle contains 11 apps, including YouTube, Maps and Gmail, but regulators focused on the three that had the biggest market share: Google Search, Chrome and the company’s Play Store for apps.
Google’s position is that because Android is open-source and free, phone makers or consumers can decide which apps to install on their devices. Also, because the company is the only one bearing the costs of developing and maintaining Android, Google must recoup that expense by include apps that generate revenue, namely Search and Chrome.
The company also argues that having apps pre-installed on Android phones does not exclude users from downloading rival services.
The European Commission also took issue with Google’s payments to wireless carriers and phone makers to exclusively pre-install the Google Search app.
Google said that those deals amounted to less than 5 percent of the market, so they could not possibly hurt rivals.
Following the ruling, Google made some changes to address the issues, including giving European Android users a choice of browser and search app, and charging device makers to pre-install its apps.
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