14 DAY TRIAL // Huawei’s legal trouble is no longer a secret for anybody, as the Chinese company struggled to deal with sanctions announced by the United States government, and which essentially blocked it from working with American partners and use their products.
Many believed that China could at some point seek revenge after all the problems that Huawei had to deal with in international markets, and Apple has long been considered a potential target.
But now it looks like the Beijing government could actually start an antitrust probe on Google, according to a Reuters report, with the investigation likely to start in October.
Unsurprisingly, the case was proposed by none other than Huawei, and China will look into a possible abuse of the dominant position on the market of Android, Google’s mobile operating system.
On the other hand, worth knowing is that the proposal is yet to get the go-ahead, but given the problems that Chinese companies have experienced lately in the United States, there’s a good chance the local government gives the green light to this request.
China’s retaliation
Earlier this fall, China warned that it won’t just sit and watch how the United States force TikTok to transfer ownership to an American company, suggesting that it could retaliate at some point in the future. United States President Donald Trump warned that TikTok would be banned unless the American operations were ceased to a local firm.
Microsoft was considered one of the favorite parties to take over TikTok in the U.S., but the Chinese service eventually picked Oracle as its trusted partner in the country.
For the time being, neither Chinese officials nor Google commented on this possible investigation of the search giant’s practices in the country, so we’ll still have to wait a bit more until a decision in this case is being made.