Alphabet, the parent company of Google, is under renewed scrutiny in Europe following an antitrust complaint filed by six civil society organizations alleging violations of the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), according to Reuters.
The complaint, submitted Thursday, accuses Alphabet of failing to comply with DMA requirements that mandate tech “gatekeepers” — companies providing key platform services — must allow users to easily uninstall pre-installed applications. The law, which came into force two years ago, aims to rein in the dominance of major tech firms and create a fairer digital ecosystem for both consumers and competitors.
The organizations behind the complaint include British-based ARTICLE 19, along with European Digital Rights (EDRi), Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), Germany’s Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte (GFF), Greek NGO Homo Digitalis, and Dutch group Vrijschrift.org. Per Reuters, these groups argue that Google’s Android operating system makes it unnecessarily difficult for users to remove the company’s own pre-installed apps.
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“Alphabet has designed its Core Platform Service Android in a way to hide from end users the possibility to disable its own pre-installed gatekeeper apps,” the groups stated in their filing. “What is more, Alphabet goes to great length to scare away end users who have found that possibility against all odds of actually disabling Google’s pre-installed apps,” they added.
The complaint urges the European Commission to investigate whether Alphabet is in breach of the DMA, a key piece of EU legislation aimed at curbing the influence of tech giants by enforcing transparency and consumer rights.
In response, Alphabet dismissed the allegations. “It is easy to uninstall apps on Android devices, so this complaint does not represent a genuine user concern,” a Google spokesperson said, as reported by Reuters. The company also noted that other regulatory bodies, including the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), have previously rejected similar complaints.
The European Commission has confirmed that it received the complaint and is currently evaluating it under its usual procedures.
