First Administrative Action against Google

Japan Fair Trade Commission announced that it issued the Notice of Commitment Procedure to Google LLC. Google submitted to FTC the commitment plan to ensure that the conduct of restricting Yahoo Japan to use technologies for search advertising would be eliminated. FTC approved the plan, recognizing it as sufficient and expectable to be implemented. This is the first administrative action against Google, the United States search giant, by FTC.

Google was suspected as having committed the conduct that made Yahoo Japan difficult to provide Mobile Syndication Transactions between 2015 and 2022, restricting the provision of technologies for search engines and search advertising to Yahoo. The restriction was made by amending contract, and FTC has been investigating whether the contract would violate Anti-Monopoly Act.

 

The technology is used for keyword-targeted search advertising, which delivers advertisement related to the word input in the search engine. If a user imput “ice cream,” there appears ads related to ice cream. Although Yahoo had been taking advantage of Google’s technology since 2010 when those two companies started technological cooperation, Google required Yahoo to stop the delivery of advertisement in mid-2010s.

 

Google occupies seventy or eighty percent of the share in that technology and Yahoo Japan has been falling behind Google. Yahoo accepted the request from Google. FTC doubted that it may be an overuse of superior bargaining position by Google, which would violate Anti-Monopoly Act.

 

The Notice of Commitment Procedure is a system that allows a company being taken investigation of FTC submit a plan of commitment with measures for improvement by itself. If FTC approves it as efficient, the investigation will be finished. FTC will not issue any penalty, but it will continue watching whether the plan is implemented. If it finds the plan not being fulfilled, FTC will cancel the approval and resume its investigation.

 

According Google’s commitment plan, Google will not restrict the provision of technology to Yahoo and implement that measure for next three years. Google will also take necessary measures such as compiling action guidelines for compliance with Anti-Monopoly Act and periodic training for related employees. FTC’s approval of Google’s commitment plan is one of the administrative actions.

 

The government of Japan is enhancing regulation on making use of superior bargaining position in the business of information technology. It submitted the Diet a bill for promoting competition on software in smartphone, which prohibits arbitral display of information which is beneficial to the search engine company. The bill also urges making easier a change in default setting of smartphone and recommendation of multiple choices of browser.

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