Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

According to news in the morning of January 11, Beijing time, Google was reportedly punished by the Indian government for its monopoly on the Android operating system. Google recently said in a document submitted to the Supreme Court of India that Android ecology is on the verge of stagnation in India because the Indian government's penalty order requires Google to change the marketing mode of its Android operating system.

In October last year, the Indian government's antitrust agency, the Indian Competition Commission, issued a $161 million fine and penalty order against Google of the United States (currently about 1.092 billion yuan). Charged with abusing Android's dominant position in the Indian market (97% of smartphones in India use Android) The agency also asked Google to revise restrictions that require Android smartphone makers to pre-install official apps.

After the penalty order, Google said the competition commission's decision would force the company to change its long-standing business model. However, in the above documents to the Supreme Court of India, Google quantified the subsequent impact of the adjustment measures the company needs to make to the penalty order for the first time.

Google said that under the penalty order, it would need to revise existing commercial contracts in India, propose new licensing agreements, and modify cooperation agreements with more than 1100 Indian hardware manufacturers and thousands of third-party software developers.

For this. Device manufacturers, application developers and users in India make up an Android ecosystem, but due to the adjustments that have to be made, the ecosystem has reached the brink of stagnation, Google said in a court filing.

Google mentioned that the Android operating system has been introduced into the Indian market for 14 to 15 years, but under the penalty order, Google will need to make major changes to Android, which will have a far-reaching impact.

A Google spokesman could not be reached for comment.

It should be noted that in the past, the European Commission has also investigated the monopoly of the Android operating system, and in its 2018 antitrust investigation ruling, the European Commission asked Google not to impose restrictions on Android device manufacturers (Google later challenged the EU's $4.3 billion antitrust fine). This time, however, Google is worried that the Indian Competition Commission has asked for a much stronger remedy for the same problem than the European Commission.

Generally speaking, Google licenses Android to smartphone makers, but critics point out that Google will add restrictions in the licensing process, such as forcing Google's official software to be pre-installed on mobile phones. This requirement violates fair competition in the market. Google retorts that it is this pre-installed agreement that keeps Android available to consumers for free.

At present, once Indian mobile phone manufacturers pre-install Google Maps, Youtube and other official software, consumers will not be able to uninstall. The Indian Competition Commission has asked Google not to ban consumers from uninstalling official applications.

The Competition Commission has also provided Google with an exception that the licensing model of the Google Play Software Store (which is also a software of its own) will not be equated with the pre-installation of other official software, such as Google search service, Chrome browser, Youtube and so on.

In court documents, Google said that no other country or region in the world, other than India, required such large-scale changes to Android for the same product.

After the Indian Competition Commission's penalty order was issued, Google appealed to the Indian Supreme Court to stop the enforcement of the penalty order. The adjustment measures requested by the Indian government will take effect on January 19, according to court documents dated January 7. Therefore, in the next few days, the appeal will be heard in the Supreme Court of India.

It was previously reported that after the Indian Competition Commission's penalty order was issued, Google accused part of the text of the penalty order to have copied the European Commission's 2018 ruling on Google. Neither the Indian Competition Commission nor the European Commission responded to this criticism.

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