Antitrust probe launched against Google in Turkey

American multinational tech company Google faces a regulatory scrutiny in Turkey after officials launched an antitrust investigation on the companys Android operating system, a media report said.

The investigation, prompted by a complaint from Google's Russian competitor Yandex, was launched to find out whether the tech giant's software has broken the country's antitrust rules, New York Times reported.

Google has been accused that its software bundle in Android creates an unfair advantage against its competitors.

The investigation in Turkey was the latest legal problem for Google, which faces three separate competition charges in Europe and has already been found to breach antitrust legislation in Russia, the report said.

The investigation by Turkish officials is similar to the one by the European Commission regarding Google's alleged abuse of its dominant position with Android, which runs on 75 per cent of smartphones worldwide, to unfairly gain market share.

Google has rejected these claims and argued that the European regulators did not properly factor in consideration the fragmentation of Android as it gets modified by developers.

--IANS

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