Europe: Google in trouble again

The European Commission has issued formal antitrust charges against Google’s Android operating system.

The European Commission’s objections state that Google is abusing its position in three ways:

• By requiring manufacturers to pre-install Google search and Chrome and requiring Google search to be set up as the default search engine
• By preventing manufacturers from selling smart mobile devices running on competing operating systems
• By granting financial incentives to manufacturers and mobile network operators on condition that they exclusively pre-install Google Search on their devices

Google has been given twelve weeks to respond.

More information: BBC News; EUObserver.