The FTC said on Monday that Alphabet immediately changed its behavior after regulators discovered the practice and promised to give Yahoo Japan access to keyword-related targeted advertising technology.
The Zhitong Finance App learned that the Japan Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said that from 2015 to 2022, Google, a subsidiary of Alphabet (GOOGL.US), blocked Yahoo Japan from obtaining the technology needed to generate targeted advertising revenue from mobile device searches.
The FTC said on Monday that Alphabet immediately changed its behavior after regulators discovered the practice and promised to give Yahoo Japan access to keyword-related targeted advertising technology.
“Google's actions have had a significant impact on limiting competition,” FTC official Saiko Nakajima told reporters. Yahoo Japan is a subsidiary of LY Corp., which operates Japan's largest instant messaging app Line. Nakajima said that Japanese regulators will continue to monitor the situation and reserve the right to re-investigate Google.
This commitment is part of the FTC's first administrative action against Alphabet, which has gone unpunished.
Antitrust enforcers around the world are increasingly concerned that a few large companies control much of the world's critical technology. Regulators are concerned that companies such as Microsoft (MSFT.US), Google, and Amazon (AMZN.US) are using their technology and scale to defeat or acquire potential competitors to stay ahead.
Alphabet is responding to domestic and international complaints about its use of illegal means to hinder competition. In the US, dozens of state attorneys general complained that developers had to go through the Google Play App Store to reach users, so Google faced a $700 million settlement.
The Japanese authorities are also investigating Alphabet to see if it requires local smartphone makers to prioritize Alphabet's search service on their devices.