South Korea's Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) fined Google 42.1 billion won ($31.72 million) for blocking the release of mobile video games on a Korean competitor platform called One Store, TechCrunch reported. KFTC said that Google allegedly did not allow Korean video game companies to release their games on platforms other than Google's Play Store from June 2016 to April 2018. This included Korean gaming companies (including NCSoft Corp. and Netmarble Corp.), and other smaller firms and Chinese companies, Bloomberg reported. In return for exclusive access to their games, Google allegedly said it would promote these games and provide further support. Google responded to MediaNama's query stating, "We have cooperated diligently with the KFTC’s investigation and deliberation process for the past five years and believe that there has been no violation of the law. Unlike some mobile operating systems, Android gives developers complete control over how they distribute their apps. Google makes substantial investments in the success of developers, and we respectfully disagree with the KFTC's conclusions. We will carefully review the final written decision once it's shared with us to evaluate the next course of action.” How big is One Store in South Korea? In the overall mobile app market in South Korea, Google had a share of 74%, One Store has a share of 14% and Apple has a share of 12% at the end of 2021, according to this report by Bloomberg. However, if one looks at only the Android app market in South Korea, Google accounted for…
