GOOGLE’s Previous encounter with antitrust

Regulations in India and Europe

1. Google has been fined about $9 billion in Antitrust Regulation penalties

till date in India and Europe.
2. In April 2015, group of companies mainly Nokia, Oracle and Microsoft
alleged in Europe that Google was forcing third-party websites to not
source search ads from competitors.
3. Google was found guilty by the European Commission in 2017 and 2018
for breaching Antitrust laws and was fined €2.42 billion, US$5 billion
respectively.
4. Allegation of both CCI and EC were found to be valid that google was
abusing its dominant position in the market for its own interest and thus
the device manufacturer were forced to pre-install google apps.
5. EC fined google in March 2019 once again for imposing contractual
restriction on companies for using its Adsense technology in search
boxes.
6. As Expected google denied all the allegations and appealed for all the
fines.

Identify the elements of dominant position

1. Although there were Penal provision for abusing dominating position in

Indian and European markets, they were completely limited and had no
regulations on Business Firms which appeared to grow organically but
intended to eliminate competition.
2. CCI did not frame the term relevant market completely which was
necessary, Google thus found a opportunity to expand its Mobile OS
platforms.
3. Rival companies OS such as IOS from Apple and Microsoft Windows
were not allowed for third-party licensing so manufacturers were
attracted towards android.
4. This strengthened googles market position also, The EC stated that
product differentiation was not possible on the basis of OS which resulted
in indulgence of google in anti-competitive conducts.
5. Google designed its own apps like google maps, Play-store,Gmail etc
which were essential for users which was in turn mandatory for the
device manufacturer to provide pre-installed or else the sale of the device
manufacturer may get hampered.
6. This resulted in mandatory agreement between device manufacturers and
Google which completely favored Google and strengthened there
domination further.
7. This resulted in decimation of device manufacturers ability to develop
and sell any versions of Android OS that were not approved by Google.