Google Hit With $35.8M Fine for Blocking Rivals in Australia
Big Tech’s battles with regulators are intensifying everywhere, and the penalties are piling up.
Being a major part of Silicon Valley companies, Google is no stranger to being fined. By my calculations, the Alphabet-owned company has paid at least $1.6 billion in fines this year alone, from antitrust penalties in Europe to data protection violations elsewhere.
Now, Australia is imposing yet another fine on the company.
This latest penalty comes after regulators found that Google broke competition laws by making deals with the country’s two biggest telecom operators, Telstra and Optus, to pre-install Google Search on Android phones. On the surface, this might seem like standard tech bundling, but the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) argued that the deals, which ran between late 2019 and early 2021, effectively shut out rival search engines and limited consumer choice. The watchdog said the arrangement gave Google an unfair advantage in maintaining its dominance in the search market.
For Google, which admitted the arrangement had a “substantial impact” on competition, the way forward has been to cooperate. The company has agreed to pay a A$55 million ($35.8 million) fine, jointly submitted with the ACCC to the Federal Court, though the court still has to decide if the penalty is appropriate.
Kelechi Edeh
Google has also stopped signing similar deals and says its commercial agreements no longer include those kinds of provisions. A spokesperson stressed that Android device makers now have more flexibility to pre-load browsers and search apps, which could open the door for more competition.
Still, the fine is part of a wider regulatory storm for Google in Australia. Just last week, a court mostly ruled against it in a lawsuit brought by Fortnite maker Epic Games, accusing Google and Apple of blocking rival app stores on their mobile platforms. And only a month earlier, YouTube was added to a nationwide ban on social media platforms admitting users under 16, after regulators reversed an earlier decision to exempt the video-sharing site.
When you zoom out, the story isn’t just about one company and one fine. Big Tech’s battles with regulators are intensifying everywhere, and the penalties are piling up. Apple, for instance, has paid more than $2 billion in fines in Europe this year alone, while Meta continues to rack up hundreds of millions in privacy-related penalties. For Google, Australia’s A$55 million fine may not be its biggest, but it’s another reminder that regulators, especially outside the U.S., are increasingly unwilling to let tech giants dictate the rules of competition.
Louis Eriakha
