Google has been hit with yet another antitrust complaint in Europe, this time for alleged anticompetitive behavior in the app market, the European Union’s top competition authority confirmed Tuesday.
The formal complaint was filed by Aptoide, a Portuguese startup in the apps sector, according to officials at EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia’s office.
Aptoide runs an independent apps store for Android smartphones. It claims that Google is leveraging its dominant position in the Android market to control the market for Android apps.
“For no reason, Google regularly suspends Aptoide from appearing on Google Play thereby depriving the start-up of accessing consumers and vice versa,” Aptoide said in a statement released Tuesday.
Google is already the subject of other EU antitrust complaints. The European Commission, which carries out antitrust investigations, will deal with each complaint separately.
One of the other complaints, filed last year by major companies such as Microsoft and Oracle, alleges that Google packages apps such as Maps and YouTube in a way that disadvantages other providers, and puts Google in control of consumer data on a majority of smartphones.
(More to come.)
