As we’ve seen over the last several years with continuous problems that Google has been facing, it’s no surprise that they’re facing mounting challenges from all over the world. We know that there are three active complaints in Europe, which are directed at vertical search, Android OEM agreements and AdWords contracts, but it seems that the search giant has lost an appeal in Russia, as well as facing a new investigation in South Korea.
Last week, a court in Russia rejected an appeal by Google to overturn a nearly $7 million fine that was imposed by the Russian competition authorities. In the September of last year, Russian antitrust regulators had determined that Google violated competition laws by requiring Android phone makers to pre-install certain Google apps on Android as a condition access to the Google Play store.Initially, the compliant was brought by Yandex, which also filed a similar complaint in Europe.
Right now, it’s not clear if Google exhausted the number of potential appeals in Russia. It’s very close if they haven’t. More than likely though, Google will probably have to pay the fine and change its OEM agreements to remove the app pre-install clauses.
In addition to that, South Korea officials said they’ve launched a formal antitrust investigation against Google. They haven’t disclosed the nature of the investigation. It’s interesting that Korean antitrust regulators previously chose against an antitrust penalty for Google for its app pre-install policies.