The European Union's antitrust regulators had slapped Google with a record $2.7 billion fine last month, owing to the company's practice of favoring its own shopping comparison service in case of related online searches. However, according to a report on Bloomberg, that fine might not be the end of Google's worries in Europe. The EU antitrust regulators' separate investigations into Andriod and AdSense are on the verge of completion. There is a possibility that the company could be slapped with more fines by the Eu Body.
Trying times
Bloomberg spoke to three people close to the developments and according to them, the EU cases against AdSense and Android are in the final stages.
However, the case against Android might take a bit of time and a verdict might be reached by the end of 2017. Google is one of the biggest targets of the EU antitrust commission and the cases have been under investigation for around seven years now. In fact, the head of the commission, Margrethe Vestagerhad, has even gone as far as to say that the year 2017 is the 'G year' for the commission.
The EU body has stated that Google's AdSense service is detrimental to other forms of search results advertising services on the Internet and went on to add that the company's unfair restrictive practices were throttling competition. Additionally, the company had even forced its clients to stop accepting search advertising from competing forms.
Android troubles
Google's business strategy as regards to Android has come under attack from the EU body and as such has been criticized by the company. The crux of the matter lies in the company's strict policies regarding apps and Google has argued that those policies ensure that the phones run smoothly. In addition to that, it has been pointed out that Google's contracts with phone manufacturers are restrictive in nature since all phone makers are forced to install Google apps into phones.
The company's practice of paying telecom companies to favor Google search on phones has also proven to be a sticking point.
Considering the fact that Google has already attracted a hefty $2.7 billion fine for gaming its search engine, the company will definitely not want to be slapped with more fines. If the company rings in the changes to these services soon then they can end up avoiding any fines.
However, such a strategy had not proven to be successful regarding their previous antitrust issue. Many European politicians have asked for strict sanctions on the company while Americans have asserted that big American firms are being targetted systematically.
