EU competition chief set to charge Google with Android abuse: sources

The European competition commission is gearing up to charge Google with giving unfair prominence to its own apps like search and maps in supplementary software licensing deals it strikes with mobile phone makers running its Android operating system, four sources familiar with the process said on Monday.

Google generated an estimated $11 billion (9.73 billion euros) last year from sales of ads running on Android phones featuring Google apps. Android has become the dominant software in recent years, running most of the world's smartphones.

If the EU were to find Google guilty of market abuse it could lead to a fine of up to $7.4 billion or 10 percent of 2015 revenue, while forcing it to change its business practices.

EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager said on Monday her agency's probe centers on the use of exclusive contracts which enable phone firms to run Google's own apps and not necessarily on demands they bundle in a complete set of Google apps such as Search, Maps and Gmail and its Google Play app store on phones.

"Our concern is that, by requiring phone makers and operators to pre-load a set of Google apps, rather than letting them decide for themselves which apps to load, Google might have cut off one of the main ways that new apps can reach customers."

Hmm, multi-pronged issue here.. First the claim centers around requirements to access the Google Play Store which requires a set of Google services which handles the DRM aspects - that's a unit (and keeping up with changes on that can be frustrating for Kindle owners like me..)

The second issue is the 'install one, install all' policy that Google has for their core apps. If you include Google's browser in your distribution, you also have to include the other Google apps (search, mail, etc.)

I'm unclear where the EU derives the power to determine how companies give away free software, but as Samsung amply demonstrates, you're not locked into a particular browser, mail app or search engine in creating an Android product.

The war, of course, is over your search results - other companies want your eyes, and are finding it increasingly hard to compete with Google on a level field, so are always seeking new and innovative ways to force users to use their awful products.

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