EU fines Google a record $5 billion over mobile system

The European Union fined Google a record $5 billion on Wednesday for using the market dominance of its Android mobile operating system to force handset makers to install Google apps, reducing choice for consumers. The EU said Google broke the rules when it required mobile phone producers to pre-install the Google Search and browser apps if they wanted to use Google’s app store. Google also paid big producers to exclusively pre-install the Google Search app. EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said “companies must compete on their merits,” playing by rules that favor consumers and open markets, and not restrict competition. Google immediately responded that it would appeal. “Android has created more choice for everyone, not less,” said company spokesman Al Verney. The EU’s fine, which caps a three-year investigation, is the biggest ever imposed on a company for anticompetitive behaviour. Vestager said that once the financial size of the company is taken into account, the 4.34 billion euro fine is not disproportion- ate. Google parent company Alphabet made $9.4 billion in profit in the first three months of the year and reportedly had over $100 billion in cash reserves. In June last year, regulators already fined Google 2.42 billion euros ($2.8 billion) for favouring its shopping listings in search results. But the EU’s insistence that Google change its practices could have a bigger impact than the fine itself. “The important thing is not to be distracted by the size of the fine, what is important is that Google has to change its abusive behavior,” Rich Stables, CEO of the rival search engine Kelkoo, told The Associated Press.