The lawsuit argues that Google has effectively ‘bought’ the UK mobile phone search engine market. Google forced mobile phone handset manufacturers to pre-install the Google Search and Google Chrome browser apps on devices that use Google’s Android operating system in order to obtain a licence to use Google Play.
Google also unlawfully paid billions to Apple to ensure that it was the default search engine on iPhones and other devices that used Apple’s iOS operating system. In 2019, Google paid £1.2 billion to Apple in the UK to be the default search engine on the Safari browser.
It is claimed that Google has used its market dominance to effectively charge advertisers over the odds. Costs were then passed on to such an extent that all consumers ended up paying higher prices for goods and services sold by brands that have advertised on the platform.
I tend to be pretty pessimistic about these cases. Even if the UK Govt win, Google won’t change anything, or if they do the change will be subtle enough to not have any impact
I’m not so sure, if it is quite expensive and carries on being quite expensive, they may need to make changes to default search or default browsers. If this can help people get Firefox easier, this could start to chip away at the viability of WEI (web DRM).
this is a £7 billion fine against a company that can afford to pay apple £1.2 billion for a system default…
Because they gain more from it. They pay Firefox for default search. There is a return on investment. $7bn is a larger cost and would need greater revenue from those activities to justify it. Whether they do or not, from the UK market, we’ll have to wait and see, but it is a reasonable dint.