The Australian Federal Court has imposed a significant penalty of $55 million on Google Asia Pacific, finding the company guilty of striking anti-competitive agreements that effectively locked out rival search engines on millions of Android devices. The ruling serves as a powerful statement against the use of dominant market positions to stifle competition within Australia’s digital economy.
The Court found that the prohibited conduct occurred between December 2019 and March 2021. During this period, Google reached confidential understandings with the nation’s two largest telecommunications providers, Telstra and Optus, ensuring that only Google Search would be pre-installed on the Android smartphones they sold.
In exchange for this exclusivity, the two major telcos received a portion of the advertising revenue generated by consumers using the pre-installed Google search bar. The ACCC, which initiated the legal action, successfully argued that this arrangement smothered fair competition before rival search providers had a chance to gain meaningful exposure on consumer screens.
Google ultimately conceded that its conduct was likely to have substantially lessened competition. The $55 million penalty, agreed upon jointly between Google and the regulator, marks one of Australia’s most substantial financial consequences imposed over anti-competitive behavior in the digital marketplace.
ACCC Deputy Chair Mick Keogh emphasized the severity of the violation, stating that the penalty reinforces that “there are serious and costly consequences for engaging in anti-competitive conduct.” He underscored that locking out competitors in a way that substantially lessens competition is illegal and fundamentally undermines the market economy.
Beyond the immediate financial penalty, Google and its US parent, Google LLC, have taken concrete steps to reshape their Australian operations. On August 18, 2025, they provided a court-enforceable undertaking to the ACCC, pledging to eliminate restrictive clauses governing pre-installation and default search engine settings from future contracts with both Android phone manufacturers and telcos.
This commitment builds upon earlier undertakings from Telstra, Optus, and TPG, which agreed not to renew or enter into any contracts that mandate Google Search as the default. This collective action grants telcos the freedom to configure search services on a device-by-device basis, opening the door for rival search tools, including those leveraging artificial intelligence, to compete for pre-installation and greater exposure to the Australian public.