On Wednesday, the British business competition regulator said Apple and Google are too powerful and need to retool how they operate around the British public. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo
Britain’s competition regulator on Wednesday took aim at Google and Apple as the government agency flagged the two business giants under its highest designation as nearly too powerful to control.
The British government’s Competition and Markets Authority placed the two companies under its “strategic market status,” in effect saying their power over mobile platforms warranted regulatory intervention due to Apple and Google’s power over their business market.
“The app economy generates 1.5% of the U.K.’s GDP and supports around 400,000 jobs, which is why it’s crucial these markets work well for business,” according to Will Hayter, the CMA’s executive director for digital markets.
It labels the two companies with “substantial and entrenched market power” and a “position of strategic significance” that “may be limiting innovation and competition” on digital activity in Britain.
Google called the CMA’s ruling “disappointing, disproportionate and unwarranted.” Apple, meanwhile, says it risks harming British consumers via “weaker privacy” and a supposed “delayed access to neat features.”
The authority may seek to force the companies to change their practices in order to allow for greater business competition.
However, CMA officials added in a statement it did not “find or assume wrongdoing” on behalf of Apple or Google.
“We simply do not see the rationale for today’s designation decision,” Google’s competition lead Oliver Bethell told the BBC.
On Wednesday, Hayer noted that Apple and Google’s mobile platforms were used by thousands of businesses across the British economy to market and sell products and services to millions of customers.
But the two platforms’ rules “may be limiting innovation and competition,” he said.
The government regulator will push the companies to change app store preferences to allow for more and better fairness for business competition, but what that will translate to is unclear.
In July, the CMA launched its investigation into Google and Apple over their mobile operating systems.
Wednesday’s CMA decision followed its last SMS ruling earlier this month that targeted Alphabet-owned Google’s advertising and search services.
