On Thursday 24 July, five digital rights groups filed a complaint against Alphabet (Google’s parent company), calling on the Commission to open an investigation into the company’s failure to comply with its obligations under the Digital Markets Act (DMA).
The signatories - ARTICLE 19, EDRi, Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte (GFF) and Homo Digitalis - believe that Alphabet is knowingly contravening Article 6(3) of the DMA, which obliges designated ‘gatekeepers’ to allow users to uninstall applications preinstalled on their operating systems (OS).
“Android [Google’s operating system] only allows you to ‘deactivate’ preinstalled applications. Representatives of Alphabet have tried to argue that ‘deactivate’ is the same thing as ‘uninstall’ (...); we maintain that [these are] two very different things”, say the signatories.
According to them, the operating system is also designed to “hide” this deactivation option from users.
Google has been on the Commission’s radar since March 2024, when an investigation was opened (see EUROPE 13378/8) into anti-steering and self-referencing practices.
The Commission adopted a ‘preliminary opinion’ in March, confirming its suspicions (see EUROPE 13603/27). (Original version in French by Isalia Stieffatre)