Google LLC has been accused by some app developers of pressuring them to embed its Firebase code into their products, giving it access to even more data on consumers and a significant advantage over competing services.

Google’s Firebase mobile and web application development framework has apparently come under the scrutiny of the U.S. Justice Department and many state attorneys general as part of a wider investigation into whether or not the company is stifling its competition, Reuters reported.

The Firebase tools provide Google with information on how people are using apps that can be useful in serving up targeted ads, the report said.

“It’s about data collection and ad serving,” said Bob Lawson, founder of a rival mobile app development firm called Kumulos.

The Firebase tools are bundled with Android Studio, which is a program that helps developers to code apps for Google’s Android smartphone operating system. The tools are said to be optional, but critics say Google has made it increasingly difficult for apps to perform even the most basic of functions without them.

Last year, for example, Google made it necessary for applications to use Firebase Cloud Messaging code to send push notifications to users, critics told Reuters. Google says Firebase Cloud Messaging helps prevent apps from draining smartphone batteries too quickly. Developers can also use an alternative tool called Pushy to enable the notifications, but that tool’s creator Elad Nava told Reuters that Google’s increasingly stringent restrictions have challenged its viability.

“There’s definitely a trend where Google is trying to get as many services into Firebase as possible and restrict developers from using other services,” Nava told Reuters.

In another example, critics said Google is forcing developers to use Firebase in order for their apps to record visitor data for its analytics service. Google Analytics used to accept data from alternative tools, but that’s no longer the case, Reuters said.

To help encourage developers to use Firebase, Google has reportedly told them that doing so will significantly improve the results of their ad campaigns, Reuters added in its report.

In response to the criticisms, Google told Reuters that its Firebase tools are all optional, can be used with competing services, and can help to boost ad revenue for app makers.

But Google’s competitors argue that Firebase is just another example of how big tech firms are using smaller acquisitions to quietly expand their dominance, which is a practice the U.S. Federal Trade Commission began investigating last month.

Google acquired Firebase back in 2014 when it was a three-year old startup, and has significantly expanded its offerings through further acquisitions.

Google is basically being criticized for the synergies of its suite of developer tool offerings, but that kind of harmony is exactly what enterprises and their developers demand to build new applications faster, Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. told SiliconANGLE.

“If suite synergies are going to get caught up in antitrust laws and sentencing, we may see a very different software landscape going forward,” Mueller said. “The story changes when a player such as Google excludes and takes away alternatives that enterprises and developers want to use.”

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