European Commission Close to Pressing Charges in Google Antitrust Case

BY Evan Selleck

Published 18 Apr 2016

Google EU

On April 15 of last year, the European Commission opened up an investigation into Google’s Android operating system seeking to determine whether Google was abusing a dominant position in mobile operating systems to pre-install its own applications and services in smartphones.

Now, over a year later, Brussels is finally moving to potentially release an official charge sheet, or at the very least a statement of objections against Google, the FT reports. Four lawyers have been requesting information over the last several days, all with 24-hour deadlines. With such short notice, it is believed that the EU competition regulators are working on a tight deadline to formulate formal charges against Google.

For its part, Google has completely denied any wrongdoing, and has moved forward in that stance from the very beginning. However, if the EU does find any wrongdoing in this particular case, it can weigh a fine of up to 10 percent of the previous year’s financial revenue. That would mean Google would face a fine of 10 percent to its $74.5 billion in revenue from 2015.

[via FT]