Google slapped with ₩42.1 billion fine in S. Korea for unfair practices in app market

South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission (FTC) slapped Google LLC and its regional arms with a 42.1 billion won fine for unfair business practices aimed at solidifying its dominance in thelocal mobile gaming app market.

The fine and a corrective order, will be imposed on Google, Google Korea and Google Asia Pacific.

Google was found to have made shady agreements between June 2016 and April 2018 to keep South Korean mobile game companies from releasing their content on One Store, a major homegrown app market.

The US behemoth asked South Korean gaming companies to release their content exclusively on its Google Play platform, in return for marketing benefits, which includes having the content billed as “featured.”

Google was wary of One Store, which it felt will have a major impact on its sales in South Korea, according to the FTC.

The regulator said that the agreement helped Google solidify its dominance in the local app market.

Consequently, Google, which accounted for 80 to 85 percent of the local app market in terms of amount spent in 2016, expanded its presence to 90 to 95 percent in 2018.

On the other hand, One Store fell from 15-20 percent to only 5-10 percent over the period, the FTC added.

Google insists that it did not violate any local competition laws and said it will determine its course of action against the FTC.