EU Antitrust Regulators Appoint Expert Panel on the Case Against Android

EU Antitrust Regulators Appoint Expert Panel on the Case Against Android

Google is accused of leveraging Android’s dominant market position to unfairly gain a foothold in other segments. In particular, smartphone makers who wish to pre-load the Google Play Store are currently contractually obliged by Google to also install a whole host of other Google apps as well, including Google Search and Google Chrome. Google is also accused of paying OEMs to pre-install Search exclusively on their smartphones.

OEMs also reportedly cannot create and maintain their own fork of non-Google Android alongside other devices with Google’s Android in their portfolio. This prevents companies like Samsung and others from removing the Play Store entirely on some devices. So even though Android is open source, in practice using Android with Google’s services comes with a fair share of restrictions to it.
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