Android monopoly: Google refuses to pay its fine of 4.3 billion euros in Europe

Facing the European Union court yesterday, Google challenged its fine of 4.3 billion euros. This sum was inflicted on it in 2018, when the firm was accused of a dominant position via Android. According to the latter, the authorities forget a little too quickly that Apple is also present on the market.

Android is starting to pose some problems for Google. Recently, several countries have started to point the finger at the dominant position of the operating system on the market. India is the latest, demanding a fine of 150 million euros from the Mountain View firm. The European Union has been following the affair for several years now. In 2018, it fined the tech giant 4.3 billion euros. Having, as usual, appealed against this decision, the latter defended himself yesterday in front of the EU court.

According to Google, the accusation of monopoly is unfounded for the simple reason that Apple exists and that users have a perfect choice to download third-party applications. “Android is indeed an outstanding success story of the power of competition in action”, said Meredith Pickford, counsel for the group. “We will explain that […] the commission turned a blind eye to the real competitive dynamics of this sector, that between Apple and Android ”.

On the same subject: Google receives a fine of 220 million euros in France for its anti-competitive practices

Google challenges the European Union’s fine

Like Indian justice, Brussels accuses Google of having prohibits smartphone manufacturers from developing their own operating system in order to leave the field free for Android. As a reminder, the Play Store generated $ 11.2 billion in 2019. Today, the operating system is installed on 80% of smartphones in circulation.

A situation that also benefits its search engine and its browser, “At a critical time in the development of mobile computing, when the market was still questionable“, According to Thomas Vinje, lawyer for FairSearch, a group that filed a complaint against the firm in 2015. It remains to be seen whether Google will manage to extricate itself from this new impasse. The company has a habit of paying large sums of money to avoid any lawsuits.