For its part, Google responded to the investigation and said that Android is an open source platform that encourages diversity of partners and manufacturers, so users can choose the browser of their choice.
“Its openness and flexibility ensures that users always have the choice to personalize their devices in relation to their needs, including the way they browse and search for information on the Internet or download applications,” the company commented in a statement to the CNBC.
It is worth remembering that this same issue has already generated important controversies for Google in other territories, such as the United States, where it is facing the antitrust trial largest in its history, since the United States Department of Justice accuses it of paying millions of dollars to maintain its monopoly as a search engine on mobile devices.
According to the US government, Google, with a market value of more than $1 trillion and nearly 90% of the search market, was illegally paying $10 billion annually to smartphone makers like Apple already. mobile carriers like AT&T and others to be the default search engine on their devices.
“Google has used anti-competitive tactics to maintain and expand its monopolies in the general search services, search advertising, and general search text advertising markets, which are the pillars of its empire,” the lawsuit reads.
But that is not the only case in which the search business has represented a serious blow to Google. In 2018, the European Union fined the company a record $4.6 billion for abusing its Android dominance.
At the time, the bloc’s regulators said Google had unfairly favored its own services by forcing phone makers to pre-install its Chrome browser by default, as well as its app store.