European Union regulators have given Google an extra six weeks to respond to charges that it abused the dominance of its Android mobile operating system.
According to Reuters, Google now has until September 7 to argue its case to the European Commission. Google’s original response deadline was July 27, twelve weeks after the Commission sent its statement of objections to the company.
The extension reportedly came after Google requested “additional time to review the documents in the case file,” Commission spokesman Ricardo Cardoso told Reuters.
EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager said previously she “will carefully consider Google’s arguments before deciding how to proceed” with the case.
At the end of April, the European Commission found the tech giant abused its dominant market position and violated European Union anti-trust rules.
In particular, the commission alleged Google ran afoul of anti-trust rules by requiring manufacturers to pre-install Google Search and Google’s Chrome browser, and requiring them to set Google Search as the default search service on devices; preventing manufacturers from selling devices that run on competing operating systems based on the Android open source code; and by giving financial incentives to manufacturers and operators to exclusively pre-install Google Search on their devices.
Google is facing fines of up to 10 percent of its global profits, or about $7.4 billion, in the case, Reuters said.
The investigation into Android’s dominance is just one of two current probes from the EU into Google’s practices.
A separate EU anti-trust investigation charged Google displayed “systematic favorable treatment” for its Google shopping ads in search results. In that case, Google has already submitted a detailed response to the allegations and the commission is in the process of sorting through the data provided by the tech giant, Vestager said.
According to a recent report from the Wall Street Journal, Google may also soon be facing a third EU probe into whether it blocks website operators from putting ads on their website that compete with Google’s own ads.