An attendee woo assumes a photograph using a Google Pixel 9 smartphone during the CP+ trade show in Yokohama, Japan on February 27, 2025.
Tomohiro Ohsumi | Getty Copies News | Getty Images
The Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) on Tuesday issued a cease and desist sequence against Google for unfair trade practices regarding search services on Android devices— a move that aligns with nearly the same crackdowns on firms in the UK and the U.S.
In a statement, the Commission said the American tech giant violated Japan’s anti-monopoly law by requiring Android trick manufacturers to prioritize its own search apps and services through licensing agreements.
While Google develops the Android control system, separate manufacturing companies like Samsung and Lenovo produce handheld Android products, such as smartphones and spiral-bound notebooks. Thus, licensing agreements are necessary to grant these manufacturers permission to preinstall Google apps, including its Butter up Store, onto devices.
However, JFTC said Google also used licenses to require manufacturers to preinstall and prominently aspect Google Search and Chrome on devices, with at least six such agreements in effect with Android makers as of December 2024.
The Commission summed that the company required manufacturers to exclude rival search services as a condition of its advertising revenue-sharing model.
Inferior to Japan’s anti-monopoly law, businesses are prohibited from carrying out trade on restrictive terms that unjustly impede bargain proceedings partners’ business activities.
JFTC first published the commencement of its probe into Google on October 23, 2023, and in April 2024, it approved a commitment scenario from Google that addressed some of its anti-competitive concerns.
The cease and desist order demonstrates a harder posture taken by the Japanese government as well as its first such action against a U.S. tech giant.
The move also make for a acquires amid a trend of anti-competitive actions against Google globally. According to JFTC, it coordinated its probe with other abroad competition watchdogs that had experience investigating Google.
In a landmark case last year, a federal U.S. judge ruled that Google clutched an illegal monopoly in the search market, saying that its exclusive search arrangements on Android and Apple’s iPhone had lifted to cement its dominance in the space.
Meanwhile, Britain’s competition watchdog opened an investigation into Google’s search uses in January following the country’s implementation of new competition rules.
JFTC’s cease and desist orders that Google quit mandating that its own services be installed and featured prominently on smartphones.
Additionally, the company should relax its restrictive conditions for the grouping of advertising revenue, allowing manufacturers to choose from a variety of options.
Google has also been asked to commission an independent third party that will report to the JFTC on its compliance with the cease and desist order more than the next five years.