EU: Google antitrust charges over Android not political says Vestager

The decision to bring antitrust proceedings against US tech giant Google was not politically motivated, Europe’s competition chief told CNBC, a day after the company was accused of abusing its dominance in the mobile market with its Android operating system.

On Wednesday, the European Commission – the executive arm of the European Union (EU) – said it had informed Google that the company is in breach of the bloc’s antitrust rules relating to Android. The Commission said Google’s requirement that device manufacturers to pre-install Google services such as Search and its Chrome web browser was hampering competitions.

Android is open-source and run on over 80 percent of the world’s mobile phones.

This is not the first regulatory clash between Google and the EU. The internet giant is already battling EU charges of promoting its own shopping service in Internet searches at the expense of rival products, a case which has dragged on since late 2010.

But European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, said this is not a politically motivated attack on Google or US companies.

“Even if anyone had a political goal or had feelings or a passion about companies, well our test is with the courts eventually and the court will hear nothing about feeling and politics, they want the facts of the case…and therefore we cannot interfere politically…because otherwise we risk to lose it,” Vestager told CNBC in a TV interview on Thursday.

Full Content: CNBC

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