The European Commission has concluded after a year of investigation that Google breaches the EU digital standards for rewarding their services on those of the competition and for preventing application developers from offering them to users outside the Play Store of the company itself. Those are the main results of the analysis carried out by the services of the community government, which a year ago opened a file to Google, Meta and Apple for the suspicions that breach the Digital Markets Law (DMA) that has been in force for two years. Now a process opens for the Silicon Valley company, which faces a fine of 10% of its global turnover, makes its allegations.
Brussels considers that Alphabet (which is the Google parent company) violates EU’s standards by rewarding its own services in the search engine, which takes 90% of the European market. Among the services rewarding the platform are those that have to do with hotels, flights, transport or financial searches against competition.
“Alphabet gives its own services a more prominent treatment compared to others, showing them in the upper part of the results of Google’s search or in dedicated spaces, with visual formats and improved filtering mechanisms,” says the European Commission, which considers that the changes that Google has implemented throughout this year are insufficient.
The European Commission points out that the DMA forces applications of applications that distribute them on Google Play “must be able to inform customers of cheaper alternative possibilities, direct them to those offers and allow them to make purchases.” However, he considers that the platform breaches and fears that he technically prevent it.
Likewise, community technicians consider that the only collection that is justified is the “initial acquisition” of the application and censorship that makes the other transactions made by the user. In addition, he considers that the 10% load “go beyond the justified.”
Now the company will have the right to defend itself and present allegations before the European Commission, which can make recommendations to implement changes and avoid the multimillion -dollar fine that it faces. What community sources support is that the goal is to find a solution.
“That it is clear: our main objective is to create a culture of compliance with the Digital Markets Law. The breach procedures are reserved for situations in which attempts of dialogue have not been successful. But as always, we apply our laws fairly and not discriminatory, and fully respect the defense rights of the parties,” says the vice president of competence, Teresa Ribera, in a statement.
In a statement, the company ensures that EU standards “will harm European companies and consumers, hinder innovation, weaken security and degrade the quality of the products.” Thus, he argues that Brussels forces them to “introduce even more changes in the way of showing certain types of search results, which would make users difficult to find what they are looking for and reduce traffic to European companies.” The example they put is that of travel results: “When we cannot show travel results that lead users directly to the airline sites, they usually end up buying a more expensive ticket because airlines have to pay commissions to the intermediary websites.”
It also argues that developers can distribute their applications freely on Android and that users have greater access than in Apple IOS. If we cannot protect our users from fraudulent or malicious links that take them outside the Play’s safe environment, the Commission is forcing us to choose between a closed and other insecure model, ”says the statement, which also complains about whether it cannot Helping not only those who can afford 1,000 euros in the latest Premium model. ”
Despite the complaints, the technology undertakes to continue collaborating with the European Commission to comply with the standards.
Measures for Apple
The European Commission has already concluded in June that Apple also violates the European Law on Digital Markets for torpedoing its competitors. On this occasion has established a series of measures to guarantee the interoperability of the iPhone Operating System and the IPAD with third -party devices, such as smartwatch, headphones, etc.
During the next two years Brussels will evaluate whether Apple applies these measures and, of not doing so, also faces a sanction comparable to 10% of its annual turnover in the world. Community sources suggest that a file could be opened by non -compliance before that period comes.
“Apple’s ability to innovate for European users brakes and forces us to offer our new functions for free to companies that are not subject to the same standards,” a company spokeswoman, who showed the availability of the company to cooperate with the community executive, told Efe. The company alleges that the Commission has only imposed these measures to it, although other companies are also subject to regulations, which, in their opinion, gives a competitive advantage because they will have to share their intellectual property rights with them.
Decisions about ‘Big Tech’ occur in full pulse with Donald Trump, who pressured by those companies, threatened to retaliate against European countries if companies such as X under the digital rules of the EU were fined.
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