The Japanese Fair Trade Commission, on Monday, announced that it has begun looking into Google for a potential violation of antimonopoly laws in web search services.
According to the Japan Fair Trade Commission, it is being looked into whether Google violated the country’s Antimonopoly Act by giving Android smartphone manufacturers a portion of its earnings in exchange for not installing competing search engines.
It is also investigating Google’s practice of forcing manufacturers of Android phones to include the “Google Play” app with the “Google Search” and “Google Chrome” browser apps.
“There is suspicion that through these steps it is excluding competitors’ business activity and restricting its business partners’ business activity in the search services market,” a JFTC official said in a press conference.
The representative claimed that while Google’s service was widely used, the issue was actually with fair competition.
This is coming after related inquiries by antitrust officials in the United States, the European Union, and other countries.
