The European Union Antitrust regulators are currently investigating Google for e

Question

The European Union Antitrust regulators are currently investigating Google for engaging in bundling or tying their less popular products with the dominant Android platform in mobile phones for anticompetitive reasons. The EU has said that Google by “requiring mobile phone manufacturers to pre-install Google Search and the Google Chrome browser to get access to other Google apps, the U.S. company was harming consumers by stifling competition.”

Based on your understanding of reasons for tying, explain the rationale for EU’s claim. How would it prove that Google indeed was tying for anticompetitive reasons?

Explanation / Answer

Google's Android platform has been dominant with wide range of products and applications installed by the users. Some of the dominant applications include mail, Google Playstore, Search, Maps, Youtube etc. While most of the users extremely get engaged with these applications, Google is pushing its less popular products like GDRive, Google Play Books, Google Ply Music, Duo, Earth etc. along with the Android platform thus ensuring it has monopoly in all the applications covering various requirements.This can be considered as anti-competitive as consumers/users need to have their own choices with respect to the applications they use and Google is pushing its products by tying up with mobile phone manufacturers to pre-install its dominant products through which its less popular products can be pushed once the customer start using mobile phones after purchase.

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