The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has launched Federal Court proceedings against Google Asia Pacific, alleging the company reached anti-competitive understandings with Telstra and Optus that restricted the pre‑installation of rival search engines on Android mobile phones.
Google has co‑operated with the regulator, admitted liability for the arrangements that ran from December 2019 to March 2021, and agreed to jointly ask the court to impose a $55 million penalty. The court will ultimately decide whether that figure and any additional orders are appropriate.
According to the ACCC, the arrangements required Telstra and Optus to have Google Search pre‑installed and set as the out‑of‑the‑box search option on devices they sold, and barred the telcos from installing or suggesting other general search services. In return, the carriers received a share of advertising revenue generated when consumers used Google Search on those phones. The ACCC says Google admitted those understandings were likely to substantially lessen competition.
In addition to the court action, Google and its US parent, Google LLC, have given a court‑enforceable undertaking accepted by the ACCC to address broader competition concerns arising from contractual arrangements between Google, Android handset makers and Australian telcos since 2017. Google has not accepted all of the ACCC’s concerns but has acknowledged them and offered the undertaking to resolve the regulator’s wider issues.
Under the undertaking, Google has committed to removing certain pre‑installation and default search restrictions from its agreements with Android manufacturers and telcos. That pledge sits alongside earlier, court‑enforceable undertakings offered by Telstra, Optus and TPG last year, which the ACCC accepted to resolve its concerns about their deals with Google. The telcos are not defendants in the proceedings begun on Wednesday.
Those telco undertakings — made public in mid‑ and late‑2024 — prevent the companies from renewing or entering new arrangements that would require Google Search to be pre‑installed and set as the exclusive default search function on Android devices they supply. The telcos retain the ability to configure search services on a device‑by‑device basis and may now enter pre‑installation agreements with other search providers.
ACCC chair Gina‑Cass Gottlieb said conduct that limits competition typically harms consumers through reduced CHOICE, higher prices or poorer service, and that the combination of the Google undertaking and the telcos’ commitments could open up greater search options for millions of Australians. She also pointed to the emergence of AI‑powered search tools as an additional source of competitive pressure in the market and emphasised that cooperation with the ACCC can avoid lengthy litigation while promoting competition.
The regulator’s action follows a lengthy investigation that grew out of findings in its Digital Platform Services Inquiry, which examined the competitive dynamics of digital platforms and updated its analysis of general search services in December 2024. The inquiry recommended new regulatory measures to promote competition in digital platform services, including possible service‑specific rules to address exclusive pre‑installation and default agreements.
Court documents filed by the ACCC state the litigation relates only to the revenue‑share agreements renewed between December 2019 and March 2021. The ACCC alleges Google Asia Pacific reached two separate understandings — one with Telstra and one with Optus — that effectively kept the parties bound by the terms of revenue‑share agreements containing so‑called Platform‑wide Provisions while negotiations for further deals continued, and that those understandings were likely to make it harder for other general search engines to be distributed in Australia during the relevant period. The commission says that amounted to two contraventions of section 45(1)(a) of the Competition and Consumer Act.
The Platform‑wide Provisions at the centre of the case required that specified search access points on devices supplied by Telstra and Optus be configured to use Google Search out of the box, and prevented the carriers from preloading, installing or proposing any general search service that was substantially similar to Google Search.
Because the parties reached a resolution before litigation began, the ACCC’s originating application was filed alongside an affidavit that is not public and the undertaking provided to the regulator. A copy of Google’s undertaking is available on the ACCC’s public register.
