India’s competition regulator has imposed a whopping fine of Rs 1,337 crore on Google, in an anti-trust suit linked to the Android mobile operating system.
The Competition Commission of India (CCI) on Thursday night tweeted to say that the fine was imposed on the search engine giant “for abusing its dominant position in multiple markets in the Android mobile device ecosystem”.
According to the CCI order, the search engine “operates and manages the Android OS and licences its other proprietary applications, and OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) use this OS and Google’s apps in their smart mobile devices”.
“Accordingly, they enter into multiple agreements to govern their rights and obligations, such as Mobile Application Distribution Agreement (MADA).
“MADA assured that the most prominent search entry points i.e., search app, widget and Chrome browser are pre-installed on Android devices, which accorded significant competitive edge to Google’s search services over its competitors,” the CCI said.
Google also secured significant competitive edge over its competitors, in relation to its another revenue-earning app i.e. YouTube in Android devices, according to the CCI order.
Google is yet to respond to the order.
Source: United News of Bangladesh