Baek Byung-yeul is a journalist at The Korea Times focused on cultural content, including films and cultural events in South Korea. You can contact him at baekby@koreatimes.co.kr to share your insights.
FTC chief hints at probing Google's 'bundling' strategy
Kim Sang-jo, head of the Fair Trade Commission, speaks during a press conference at the Korean Cultural Center in Brussels, Belgium, March 11. / Courtesy of the Fair Trade Commission
By Baek Byung-yeul
By Baek Byung-yeul
Korea's antitrust agency will look into whether Google's "bundling" of its services is an anticompetitive practice, said the head of the Fair Trade Commission (FTC).
Google has offered its Android operating system to phone makers for free, but the firm has been criticized for its bundling practices as the firm gives its bundle of services on Android taking priority over other firms.
“The fair trade issue involving Google can be categorized into two ― the search engine market and Google's Android operating system,” Kim Sang-jo, chairman of the FTC, told Korean reporters at the Korean Cultural Center in Brussels, Belgium, March 11.
Kim also said “Google doesn't have a dominant position in the search engine market in Korea,” implying that the FTC's ongoing investigation on the firm's Korean unit is aiming at the Android operating system.
The FTC has been investigating the company regarding whether its Korean unit has exerted pressure on local game companies to release their games exclusively on Google's Play app store since April 2018.
His remarks came on the sidelines of his participation in the 19th International Conference on Competition held in Germany. This is the first time the FTC chairman officially signaled the direction of the investigation on Google.
“Google has spread its other services taking advantage of its dominant power in the search engine market. Also the other issue involved with Google is the firm's bundling of its apps and services related to the Android operating system,” Kim said.
“The Android operating system is open source software allowing everyone to customize the source code, but services related with the Android operating system are not.”
Kim mentioned Google Play as an example of how Google promotes its services on its Android operating system saying, “Google has been bundling its Google Play as the mobile app store is embedded in the Android operating system."
Google has been hit hard for its anti-competitive practices throughout the world. In Europe, the tech giant was ordered to pay a record 4.34 billion euros ($4.92 billion) by the European Competition Commission in 2018 for abusing the dominant position of Android.
Kim explained the European Competition Commission has been investigating Google, who already has the dominant position in one service, but it has excluded other competitors by abusing its monopoly position in the market.
While taking part in the international antitrust regulators' meeting, Kim also proposed the creation of a consultative body to deal with alleged unfair practices by global IT firms.
In a circumstance where the influences of those global IT firms are getting bigger, he emphasized the need of joint actions through the community of international competition laws to deal with possible market uncertainties and confusion caused by those firms.