China: amateurs

Okay, you are possibly right here. After digging into China’s law, they do include laws that allows investigations into companies that is monopoly overseas as long as the company has business in China.

But my end point still stands; this is still a very specific time to start the investigation, Android dominance is definitely a part of cause, but in the end it is just a part of political drama between two asshole governments that end up not benefiting both county’s people

It’s Web Directory. The search engine part is Search Plus, Baidu, Sogou and Bing, where the default search plus is just Baidu again.

Google sure is a cancer, but you are not putting it in the context. They literally only provide two major services in Mainland China:

1. ads, which basically allow Chinese business to put ads on Google Ads and Google AdMob
2. developer services like GoLang and Tensorflow, but their main business in China right now is Android licensing for Chinese Mobilephone brands for their international versions.

So,

1. For ads, Google AdMob and Google Ads are not accessible in China;
2. for dev services, all Android phone in China right now are basically based on AOSP, because in China Google Framework is not useable.

From this standpoint, there is no visible reason for an antitrust probe in China.

Edit: After digging into China’s antitrust law, they do include laws that allows investigations into companies that is monopoly overseas as long as the company has business in China. So yeah, they do have reasons.

Got curious and went to the original page, and it is literally just one sentence vague announcement:

Due to Google’s alleged violation of the “Anti-Monopoly Law of the People’s Republic of China,” the State Administration for Market Regulation has lawfully initiated an investigation into Google.

Really not sure what they actually launched the antitrust probe for; this is just pure political drama lol

Edit: Okay, it is possibly because of Android dominance, but again, still a political drama

Their search service is banned but they still have ad (AdMob and Google Ads) and developer services (GoLang, Firebase, Android, Tensorflow, etc) there. and their last customer-targeted service remaining are Google Chrome (www.google.cn/chrome) and a website directory Google 265 (www.265.com)