Report from Reuters
In Brief – The German Federal Cartel Office (FCO) has announced the end of its antitrust probe of Google’s automotive services and maps platform with the company agreeing to changes addressing the regulator’s concerns. “I am delighted that we have been able to reach an agreement,” said FCO President Andreas Mundt. “Google’s commitments have the potential to bring about far-reaching changes in the market.” Under the settlement, automakers will be able to include non-Google services in in-vehicle infotainment systems that use Google Automotive Services, which consist of Google Maps, Google Play and Google Assistant. The company has also agreed to allow its map services to be combined in part or in whole into navigation services offered by other providers, such as HERE, Mapbox or TomTom. Google is expected to apply the terms of the agreement across the European Economic Area.
Context – The FCO investigation of Google’s auto services was undertaken under Section 19(a) of the German Competition Act. That law, enacted in 2021, allows the FCO to regulate the largest digital giants rather than rely on traditional antitrust investigations and enforcement actions. Following the FCO designation of Google as a digital company “of paramount significance on competition across markets”, the antitrust regulator was able to address company conduct it believed was anticompetitive, opening an investigation of its auto services in 2022. The German law was a harbinger of the EU Digital Markets Act. Some German officials have questioned the DMA for being too limited in the conduct it can address. While there are seven DMA “gatekeepers”, only 24 of their designated “core platform services” are covered by the law. Germany’s Section 19(a) authority allows the FCO to regulate any service of the five designated digital giants — Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft. For example, the FCO is challenging Apple’s in-app ad tracking rules. Allegations that Microsoft uses Office 365 to benefit products like Teams and its cloud services are not in scope for the DMA, but they are for the FCO.