Yahoo Finance Google hit with record-breaking $5 billion fine over Android web browsing
Google has been hit with a record-breaking €4.34 billion (£3.87 billion) fine from the European Union for anticompetitive "illegal practices" with its Android operating system.
The European Commission says the company has used the software to unfairly expand its dominance over all other search engines and had "denied European consumers the benefits of effective competition".
The $5 billion USD charge, which Google may appeal, amounts to the biggest fine ever imposed by a regulator against a single firm.
The dispute relates to the ways that Google has used its dominance over Android – which accounts for 74 per cent of the mobile market – to boost its other operations. The EU has argued that given that domination it is unfair to force phone companies to install other Google software like its Chrome web browser, as well as for it to stop other companies selling mobile devices that use operating systems based on Google's original code.
It is already in the process of challenging another report from the European Commission, which made similar allegations about how it had used its search engine to promote its price comparison tools. Since that fine was imposed the company has made changes to the way it displays search results, and it is unclear whether any similar changes will be made to Android.
And competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager is still running a third investigation into the company, looking at the AdSense technology used to place adverts.
The new charge would take the total fine from the EU's antitrust investigations to $6.7 billion. It may be hit by yet another substantial fine when the third investigation concludes.
The fine is worth roughly the same as the amount contributed to the EU each year by the Netherlands. But it only accounts for around half a month of revenues for Alphabet, Google's parent company.
The huge fine is likely to inflame tensions between the European Union and the United States; the two economies have been locked in a nascent trade war since Donald Trump imposed tariffs on European steel earlier this year.
Europe’s stern treatment of US technology giants has been high up on the list of concerns of US trade officials, who see the tough approach as backdoor protectionism. European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker is set to visit the White House for talks with Mr Trump next week.
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