Google Android Wear director David Singleton announces Androidwear updates during the 2015 Google I/O conference on May 28, 2015 in San Francisco, California. (Photo : Getty Images/Justin Sullivan)
The Federal Trade Commission has been investigating Alphabet Inc.'s Google and its abuses with the Android smartphone software. They will be examining the same issues that the European regulators have charged the popular internet company with.
The FTC will be extending a probe that started a year ago, which was about the internet company's abuses with the smartphone software, according to the Wall Street Journal. Some app developers and other tech firms were complaining that the internet company has abused their authority when it comes to their mobile software.
Last week, European regulators have charged the internet company of using their smartphone software's name and status as the world's most popular mobile operating system, according to another report by the Wall Street Journal. This forced device makers and wireless carriers to favor the internet company's search engine, and their other services. Both the internet company and the commission have declined to comment on this matter.
Members of the commission team that have been investigating the matter have recently met, and asked for information from at least two companies. The move means the probe is now progressing smoothly, and they are currently gaining more information from different sources.
The commission investigators have not made any conclusions as of yet, so it is too early to believe that the internet company has done anything wrong. It is too early to say that the probe might lead to legal action as of the moment.
The regulators from Europe might find a different conclusion than the commission, and there are several reasons for that. One of the reasons is that the competition laws from Europe will give antitrust enforcers more authority to take action against dominant companies.
In Europe, the mobile platform of the internet company has stronger influence there, where it has 70 percent market share in Europe's five largest countries, and it also has 59 percent market share in the United States. The commission would also have to give the internet company credit if their actions were legitimate business moves and made Android users' experiences better.
The internet company responded in a post from their official blog that the apps and services on Android devices help it improve their mobile software, and they also provide it for free to many phone makers. They want to keep the manufacturers' costs low and their flexibility of their resources high, the company added.
Check out the commission's mobile apps video below:
