Google has agreed to pay a fine of 55 million Australian dollars ($36 million) after admitting to anticompetitive agreements with the country’s two largest telecommunications firms, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission announced on Monday.
The watchdog stated that Google’s Singapore-based Asia Pacific division signed contracts with Telstra and Optus that prohibited the installation of rival search engines on Android smartphones sold to customers.
The deals, which ran for 15 months until March 2021, ensured Google Search was the sole pre-installed option. In return, the telcos received a share of advertising revenue generated from users’ searches.
