EU ruling against Google creates ‘opportunity,’ Mozilla says
Chrome, the default browser, could face more competition, but it’s still an uphill battle
BRUSSELS— European regulators’ latest swipe at the dominance of U.S. tech giant Google could open new opportunities for rivals in search and web browsers — that is, if handset manufacturers decide to make the most of the opening. The European Commission on Wednesday fined Google a record $5 billion (U.S.) for forcing cellphone makers that use the company’s Android operating system to install Google’s search and browser apps. It also set a 90-day deadline for Google to rectify the problem or risk further fines.
A remedy could involve unbundling its core apps Search, Chrome and Play Store from eight other apps it packages with Android. The company could also decide to reverse its practice of disallowing Android handset manufacturers to sell devices using altered versions of Android, such as Amazon’s Fire OS.
EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager said concerns about restricting competition “wasn’t just a remote possibility from theory books.” She said Amazon tried to license its Android-based Fire OS in 2012, but Google’s contracts prevented it.
“Manufacturers could not launch Fire OS on even a single device,” she said.
Google immediately said it will appeal the ruling, arguing that its free operating system has led to lower-price phones and created competition with its chief rival, Apple.
Android has “created more choice for everyone, not less,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai tweeted.
Mozilla Foundation, the nonprofit group that creates the lightweight ad-blocking browser Firefox Focus, said the ruling gives it the opportunity to displace Chrome as the default browser or be pre-installed alongside it on some phones. It has been in talks with manufacturers from Huawei to Samsung about those possibilities.
The ruling creates “a huge opportunity,” Denelle Dixon, Mozilla’s chief operating officer, said Wednesday.
It’s also possible not much will change. Google Search, Chrome and the Play Store are popular with consumers and developers. Handset manufacturers could choose them despite unbundling.
“It’s possible phone manufacturers won’t actually take advantage of the newfound freedom they have,” said Thomas Vinje, lead lawyer for FairSearch, the Brussels-based lob- bying group backed by Oracle, TripAdvisor and others that was the main complainant in the case. “It at least opens up the possibility.”
The fine, which caps a threeyear investigation, is the biggest ever imposed on a company by the EU for anticompetitive behaviour.
In its ruling, the EU said Google broke the rules by requiring cellphone makers to take a bundle of Google apps if they wanted any at all.
The EU took issue with Google’s payments to wireless carriers and phone makers to exclusively pre-install the Google Search app.
It also said Google broke the law by forcing manufacturers that took its apps to commit to not selling devices that use altered versions of Android.
The 4.34-billion euro penalty comes on top of a fine of 2.42 billion euros($2.8 billion) that regulators imposed on Google a year ago for favouring its shopping listings in search results.