Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – Google is currently involved in antitrust cases in various countries. Starting from the United States (US), to Europe, and finally in Japan.
Google is accused of making efforts to violate the law in order to maintain its dominance as the main search engine on various platforms. The Mountain View giant is suspected of paying telecommunications companies, cellphone manufacturers and browser services to become the default search engine.
Google’s trial against the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) is still ongoing. Reuters reported, Friday (27/10/2023), the CEO of Alphabet, which is Google’s parent, Sundar Pichai, will appear at the trial on Monday next week.
Pichai was called as a witness. He will be questioned about the investments made by the company to maintain its position as the number one search engine.
In cross examination, the US government will ask Pichai about the company’s decision to pay billions of US dollars every year to make Google Search an automatic search engine on smartphones.
Previously, the US government said Google controlled 90% of the search engine market share. In addition, Google illegally pays US$ 10 billion every year to several partners such as Apple and AT&T, to maintain control of the market.
Search engine dominance means Google makes huge profits from digital advertising. This is also considered unhealthy for competition.
So far, Google has argued that its agreements with partners comply with applicable regulations. Google also claims its dominance because users are satisfied with the quality of its services.
Google said, if users are not satisfied with the default search engine, they can still change to another search engine service provider.
Google’s case extends to Asia
Recently, the Google case also spread to Japan. Japan’s competition watchdog said it had begun investigating Google for possible violations of antitrust laws in its web search service.
Japan’s Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) said it was investigating whether Google violated Japan’s Antimonopoly Law by sharing some of its revenue with Android smartphone makers on the condition that they not install rival search engines.
They also studied Google’s practice of forcing Android smartphone makers to install the Google Search and Google Chrome browser applications with the Google Play application.
“There are suspicions that through these steps they exclude the business activities of competitors and limit the business activities of their business partners in the search services market,” said a JFTC official, quoted by Reuters.
The official said the problem was not because Google services were widely used, but about unfair competition.
“We have launched this investigation to investigate whether there is a situation where other search engine providers’ services are difficult to recognize as users’ choice, no matter how many improvements have been made,” he stressed.
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