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Google responds to anti-trust accusations from EU

Google has officially responded to the European Commission's accusations that the company is hurting online competition and engaging in anti-trust business practices by promoting its own products or services. Just yesterday, the EU Commission escalated its long running anti-trust case against Google, so the company now has to either prove its innocence or pay a hefty fine.

Google is obviously going to argue its case, saying that users have more online choice now than ever before and that the idea that Google is harming competition has “proved to be wide of the mark”. Google's Senior Vice President of Search, Amit Singhal (Via: The Inquirer) has said: “While Google may be the most used search engine, people can now find and access information in numerous different ways.”

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“If you look at shopping—an area where we have seen a lot of complaints and where the European Commission has focused in its Statement of Objections—it's clear that (a) there’s a ton of competition (including from Amazon and eBay, two of the biggest shopping sites in the world) and (b) Google’s shopping results have not harmed the competition.”

“It's why we respectfully but strongly disagree with the need to issue a Statement of Objections and look forward to making our case over the weeks ahead.”

Elsewhere on the interwebs, Google's VP of engineering pointed out that the company does a lot to help manufacturers of Android devices compete against the likes of Apple and Microsoft, which release their own devices with similar apps and services pre-installed.

Writing in a blog post, he also said that these distribution agreements were not exclusive and that Android device manufacturers were free to install their own apps or even apps from other third-parties. A good example of this being true is actually found on the Samsung Galaxy S6, which comes pre-installed with some Microsoft apps in certain territories.

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KitGuru Says: The EU Commission seems to really be reaching to try and pin Google as anti-competitive. Android is an open-platform by nature and manufacturers are free to do what they want with the operating system. That said though, Google does control the Play Store and the Google Search engine, along with the results that pop up on those services, although there seems to be very little evidence that the company is fixing search results in its favor. 

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8 comments

  1. Thanks Kit Guru for reporting something interesting. The internet seems to be full up with GTAV fanboy posts. Your articles are always short and simple, I like it.

  2. I expect the EU to fall on its face, the EU is basically arguing monopoly laws, google has a strangle hold on the search market but the face that there is competition makes the EU point moot.

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  4. There may be competition with the big companies but the fees they are charging to have products listed in the shopping section means that a lot of smaller companies who can’t afford it get looked over when people are searching for products.

  5. This is more of that French led grand standing, insisting that giant mega-corporations must be brought to heel in favor of home grown enterprises.

  6. Android is an open-platform by nature and manufacturers are FREE to do what they want with the operating system.

    it is not so open, and samsung as they use andoird, google imposes(contract) to use some of their services in the all andoird samsung devices!

  7. but google is a private entity they don’t have to sell or make their product available to everyone, just as lexus is not obligated to sell you a cheap car, if you want cheap buy a grate wall of turd.
    the only thing the eu is trying to do is manipulate control they are acting like children that cant get what they want

  8. What else do you expect of an entire continent incapable of creating a more competive enviroment for such big companies like Google and the likes?

    That’s right. You fine them. Cash in dat money. While I am grateful for their (somewhat) better stance on privacy and net neutrality, we can all see it has its downsides aswell.