Australia: Competition and Consumer Commission accepted undertaking from Google in relation to concerns over alleged abuse of market power regarding pre-installed search engines on Android devices

On 18 August 2025, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) accepted an undertaking from Google as part of its investigation into Google’s search services in Australia, including a AUD 55 million penalty. Under the signed undertaking, Google’s contracts will allow device manufacturers and mobile network operators to set any search engine as the default. The contractual arrangements will not restrict Android device makers or Australian operators from promoting or using third-party search services, or from changing default search settings after factory installation, except for Google Chrome. In addition, Google agreed that device manufacturers will be able to license Google Mobile Services separately from Google Search and Chrome. The ACCC found that provisions in Google and Google Asia Pacific’s contracts, when combined with other agreements, were likely to limit the distribution of rival services and substantially reduce competition in the Australian search engine market. The ACCC concerns centred on Mobile Application Distribution Agreements (MADAs) with device manufacturers and Revenue Share Agreements (RSAs) with mobile operators, which promoted the pre-installation of Google services on Android devices since at least 2017. While Google did not accept all of these findings, it cooperated with the ACCC by offering a section 87B undertaking and committed to introducing a competition law compliance programme.