"Japan Fair Trade Commission Rules Google Violated Antitrust Law...First Corrective Order"

The Japan Fair Trade Commission has determined that Google, the world's largest search engine company, violated antitrust laws and issued its first exclusion order (corrective order), the Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Nikkei) reported as a front-page article on the 23rd.

Reuters Yonhap News

According to the report, the Fair Trade Commission has already sent a draft exclusion order demanding that Google withdraw the violating behavior. This is the second administrative action against Google following a 'commitment procedure' in April, where Google promised to improve voluntarily, but it is the first under the exclusion order standard. The decision considered the impact of the violation on the search service market.

The Fair Trade Commission pointed out that Google restricted market competition through preferential contracts, such as pre-installing its search application on smartphones using the Android operating system (OS) and displaying it on the initial setup screen. It was also confirmed that Google signed contracts to share part of the advertising revenue with manufacturers during this process. The Fair Trade Commission judged that such actions could exclude competitors in the search service market.

Japan's Antimonopoly Act prohibits 'unfair trade practices' that may hinder fair competition. If violations are found, an exclusion order is issued to stop the behavior and prevent recurrence. However, since this does not involve acts like unfairly imposing disadvantages by abusing a dominant position, Google's case was not subject to a fine payment order. The Fair Trade Commission plans to decide on the final disposition after hearing Google's opinion.

According to StatCounter, Google's market share in the Japanese search engine market reaches about 80%. Nikkei stated, "The emergence of generative AI could change this dominant structure," evaluating that this measure aims to prevent Google's search dominance from expanding into the emerging artificial intelligence (AI) search market and to establish a fair competitive environment in the AI search market.

The media also pointed out that Google's antitrust controversy in the search market has already been raised in Europe, the United States, and other regions. The European Union (EU) imposed a fine of 4.34 billion euros on Google in 2018. In the United States, in August, a court sided with the Department of Justice's claim that Google monopolized search services. The Department of Justice has proposed measures such as forcing Google to divest Chrome.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.