Nearly a year after it was first proposed by telecommunications company Huawei, China reportedly is preparing to initiate an antitrust investigation into Google’s Chinese operations.
Sources familiar with the matter told Reuters that China’s State Administration for Market Regulation submitted the case to the State Council’s antitrust committee for review. A decision to begin such an investigation could come as soon as October.
In January, China published proposed revisions to its Anti-Monopoly Law, the first time the law would have been revised since it was passed in the National People’s Congress in 2007. It’s unclear what about Google’s services the Chinese investigation would focus on.
Huawei, the Chinese company that proposed the investigation, missed its revenue targets for 2019 by more than $10 billion. The losses have been attributed to actions against the company by the United States; the U.S. has blacklisted Huawei and banned its access to federal subsidies. Google had a temporary license to provide Huawei with technical support and access to some services, but the license expired in August.
Google has been at the center of several antitrust investigations and lawsuits. In July, the CEOs of Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and Google appeared before Congress to testify, and a report from Congress’s yearlong investigation is expected soon. The Justice Department also announced that it expects to file an antitrust lawsuit against Google amid an investigation of its “monopolistic practices.” In August, Epic Games, the maker of the popular game Fortnite, filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google after the company removed the mobile version of Fortnite from its app store.
