Fairsearch, a business group formed to fight the dominance of Google, has filed a complaint with the European Commission alledging that the search engine giant uses “deceptive conduct to lockout competition in mobile.”
The group says Google’s practices are deceptive because Android is not really free for device makers. The complaint says that Google’s marketing practices end up giving the company control of consumer data. This, of course, can result in a high opportunity cost for handset makers and for Google’s competitors.
Fairsearch is accusing Google of bundling services by requiring Android phonemakers to feature many Google apps in order to have access to the most popular ones. The complaint says that handset makers must “pre-load an entire suite of Google mobile services and to give them prominent default placement on the phone” in order to have access to YouTube, Google Play and Google Maps.
The group is asking the EC to intervene on behalf of Google’s competitors, including Fairsearch members Nokia and Microsoft, both of whom have invested heavily in the Windows operating system. Currently, Windows phones have less than 4% of the smartphone market.
The European Commission has been investigating Google since 2010, when the Mountain View company’s competitors accused it of making it hard for users to find competing search engines. The EC is currently reviewing a proposed settlement from Google.
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