On Wednesday, the European Union brought down an antitrust fine of 4.34 billion euros—or about $5.06 billion—against Google, for anticompetitive practices related to Android, the company’s mobile operating system. It’s the European Commission’s largest antitrust fine ever, topping the previous record of 2.42 billion euros—which was also levied against Google, just last year, for abuses of its search-engine dominance.
At issue is how Google has used the proliferation of Android, which runs on more than 80 percent of smartphones worldwide, to entrench its other services, especially Search. In exchange for receiving Android for free, Google demands that phone makers preinstall Google apps and services, such as Search and the Chrome browser. The European Commission’s regulators contend that this default stifles competing apps and services.
Furthermore, according to the European Commission’s decision, Google has prevented phone manufacturers from installing alternate builds of Android. Android is an open-source operating system, meaning that others can make their own, customized versions of it (Fire OS, used on Amazon’s devices, is one example). If manufacturers can’t actually use different renditions of Android, then the software’s open-source status doesn’t actually help it increase competition and consumer choice.
“It’s a very serious infringement. It’s a very serious illegal behavior,” Margrethe Vestager, the European commissioner for competition, said in a press conference announcing the decision. But a big question remains: What does the decision mean for Google and other big tech companies? This might be the tip of the iceberg for global technology regulation, for which Europe has been doing the work the United States can’t, or won’t, pursue.