Google has been granted a fortnight's extension to respond to charges by the European Union that its conduct relating to Android smartphones and tablets has breached anti-trust rules.
The search company was initially given three months to respond to the charges, and that was then extended to 7 September.
In the chargesheet, issued on 20 April, the European Commission said Google had breached EU anti-trust rules by:
- requiring manufacturers to pre-install Google Search and Google's Chrome browser and requiring them to set Google Search as default search service on their devices, as a condition to license certain Google proprietary apps;
- preventing manufacturers from selling smart mobile devices running on competing operating systems based on the Android open source code; and
- giving financial incentives to manufacturers and mobile network operators on condition that they exclusively pre-install Google Search on their devices.
{loadposition sam08}To that, Google responded by saying that while it took the EU's concerns seriously, it also believed that its business model "kept manufacturers’ costs low and their flexibility high, while giving consumers unprecedented control of their mobile devices".
Google also faces EU charges that it has abused its search monopoly for which it may be fined up to €6.6 billion, a tenth of its annual sales.