UPDATED 13:27 EDT / APRIL 15 2011

Google vs South Korea in Antitrust Allegations

Google is adding another name on its complaints list, that of Daum Communications and NHN., owner of Naver, the largest search engine in South Korea. According to this particularly complaint, to be investigated by South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission, seven out of ten new phones sold in the country run Android, which offers Google’s search engine as a default, making it practically impossible to switch to any other search engine.

Daum sees this unfair practice to restrict consumers’ choice and hinder innovation as ‘telecoms operators and handset makers will not be encouraged to offer differentiated products and services.’  On the other side, Google denies all these accusation and emphasizes the fact that it is carriers’ call on what features they offer for these devices:

“Android is an open platform, and carrier partners are free to decide which applications and services to include on their Android phones,” the company said. “But we absolutely do not require carriers or manufacturers to include Google Search on Android-powered devices.” 

At the beginning of this year, Google was facing similar allegation in Italy where Google News was accused of removing articles from Google’s main search engine. One month later, the scene’s backdrop shifts to the state of Texas, where Google is allegedly breaking search algorithm rules, demanding policies and procedures for calculation AdWords prices and minimum bids to minutes and agendas from search quality team meetings and files regarding  “black listing” or “white listing” of various sites on the web. Back in 2010, on the European continent Google made the headlines with being investigated by the European Commission for breaking ad ranking policies.

Google is momentarily going through the hoops lately, as the Android Police revealed a vulnerability affecting Android users running Skype Mobile for Android. Roughly 10 million users would face a personal data leak, such as ‘account balances, names, dates of birth, location information, phone numbers, email addresses, bios and so on.’

But Google’s not the only one facing mobile security issues.  Another noteworthy flaw in the mobile industry is the additional password introduced by Apple for in-app purchases. A few months ago a handful of angry parents came up against Apple App Store, claiming their children are making very expensive in-app purchases. Kids are lured in these games that exchange virtual currencies. On the 11th of April, Garen Meguerian, father of two, filed a suit on behalf of himself and other parents that have suffered financially. Meguerian considers the password introduced by Apple is not an efficient measure as it offered a 15-minute window during which additional purchases could be made without entering the password.


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