India forces Google to make major changes to Android

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Google will make a number of changes to Android in India, in response to the latest crackdown on the company.

It has been forced to add a number of updates to the platform, including requiring it to let users choose their default search engine and allow device makers to license individual apps to be pre-installed on phones.

The changes are the result of demands by India’s antitrust regulator, which has accused google of “abusing” the power it has over Android.

The mobile platform powers almost every smartphone in India, with estimates suggesting that 97 per cent of such devices are running the software.

India is just the latest company to crack down on Google, amid concerns over its dominance on smartphones and its use of that power. It comes just days after the company was sued in the US, by the Department of Justice, which also accused it of having abused its control over Android and smartphones.

In India, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) said that it had been forced to take the step because Google had been treating smartphone makers unfairly when licensing apps.

Google had initially challenged the CCI’s findings that it had used “unfair” business practices, fined it $161 million, and required a number of changes to Android. It failed to have that decision overturned in India’s Supreme Court, where it had argued that the changes were unprecedented in their “far-reaching” nature.

But Google announced last week that it would comply with the rules after all. And now it has posted a blog post laying out the changes it is intending to make.

As well as licensing individual apps and choosing their own search engine, Google will change how partners built their own versions of Android, allow developers to offer alternative ways of paying rather than doing so through Google’s own systems, and make it easier for users to install apps outside of the Play Store. It will also publish new information on its website about those changes.

The company suggested that the changes could be difficult to introduce and may take some time. “Implementation of these changes across the ecosystem will be a complex process and will require significant work at our end and, in many cases, significant efforts from partners, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and developers,” it wrote in its announcement.