The Japan Fair Trade Commission said 80 percent of Android devices sold in the country were made by companies that had contracts with Google.
Japan’s competition watchdog issued a cease and desist order to Google on Tuesday for anticompetitive practices, in the first action of its kind against a U.S. tech company in the country.
In the order, the Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) said Google made smartphone makers prioritize its own services. The JFTC instructed the company to appoint a third party to monitor its practices and report back to the commission.
“By binding smartphone manufacturers and telecommunication carriers, Google has made it difficult for other competing search engine applications to be used on Android phones,” Saiko Nakajima, senior investigator for digital platform operators at the JFTC, said, according to The Japan Times.
“Google’s conduct in this case has created a risk of impeding fair competition concerning transactions—thus, we have determined that this is an act in violation of the Antimonopoly Act.”
The watchdog found Google had reached agreements with at least six smartphone makers to preinstall its search service and Chrome internet browser on their phones.
According to the commission, at least 80 percent of Android devices sold in Japan were made by companies that had contracts with the Silicon Valley behemoth.
Google also had arrangements with four manufacturers and one telecom company to share advertising revenue if they agreed not to offer competing search services on their devices, the commission said.
The ruling follows an investigation that began in October 2023.
In the decision, the commission said, “Since July 2020 at the latest, Google LLC has been preventing search functionality of other general search service providers from being implemented on specified Android smartphones.”
It said that Google had done this via mobile application distribution agreements that required companies to “preinstall Google Search and place its widget and icon (including a folder storing the icon) on the Default Home Screen.”
In addition, the companies were “not to change the setting of Google Chrome in which Google LLC’s Search Functionality is selected,” it said.
The commission has instructed Google to stop violating Japan’s anti-monopoly law, barred it from asking manufacturers to preinstall its apps, and ordered the company to prepare guidelines for compliance with the law.
By Guy Birchall
