The Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) did not comment on the nature of its investigation of Google in its statement, and didn’t disclose which potential violations it’s investigating.
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South Korea’s antitrust regulator said on Friday it is looking into whether Google has violated the country’s anticompetition laws, marking the body’s first acknowledgement of a formal scrutiny against the global internet search company.
The FTC has recently completed an investigation into whether Google has increased its market share through its preinstalled mapping and search apps. It was also not clear if the probe would translate to any formal charges. “Considering the minor impact in the market, there is no good reason to charge Google here”.
The regulator, however, is said to have concluded that Google’s preloaded apps and subsidies had not helped the company to gain a dominant market share in the Asian country. The issue appears to revolve around the pre-loading of Google apps on smartphones powered by Google’s Android operating system; the commission said it had cleared the company in a 2013 investigation, but hadn’t yet come to a similar conclusion this time. This is because Naver enjoyed a market share of more than 70%, Daum Kakao enjoyed a market share of 15% to 19% and that of Google was merely 2% to 8% during the period of 2008 to March this year, when Google was involved in preloading of apps in the South Korean market. The firm was fined $6.8 million in Russian Federation on Thursday and faces multiple European Union antitrust charges. It has been probed in the past by regulators in both Brussels and Washington.
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It’s the latest in a string of anti-trust headaches for the US search giant.
