Japan's anti
TOKYO (AP) — Japan’s antitrust watchdog said Monday that U.S. search giant Google must fix its advertising search restrictions affecting Yahoo in Japan.
The Japan Fair Trade Commission said in a statement that its recent study of Google’s practices showed it was undermining fair competition in the advertising market.
Google said in an emailed statement that it has cooperated fully with the commission’s probe, and stressed the commission has not found it had outright violated anti-monopoly laws. It promised to carry out the commission’s directives to offer “valuable” search functions to Japanese users and advertisers.
Yahoo has merged with Japanese social media platform Line, and Line Yahoo declined comment.
The alleged questionable practices by Google began about a decade ago and continued for more than seven years, according to the commission.