Google CEO to meet with EU antitrust head

Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google’s parent company Alphabet, will meet with the European Union’s antitrust commissioner on Friday, The Wall Street Journal reports.

{mosads}Pichai’s meeting with Margrethe Vestager Alphabet formally rejected the European Commission’s accusation that Google violated antitrust policies.

The executive arm of the European Union charges that Google’s Android operating system and its advertising and comparison shopping services clashed with those regulations.

The meeting, which will reportedly cover antitrust issues, is the first between Google and the European Commission since February.

“Any phonemaker can download Android and modify it in any way they choose,” Google Counsel Kent Walker wrote in a post last week, arguing that Android is not monopolistic.

“But that flexibility makes Android vulnerable to fragmentation, a problem that plagued previous operating systems like Unix and Symbian.”

Pichai announced earlier this week that Google would be expanding in London, despite the company’s legal tumult with the EU.

European Commission rulings against Alphabet regarding the antitrust cases could cost the company billions of dollars and may force it to alter its business to conform to EU standards.

Across the pond, American lawmakers and officials have hammered the European Commission’s antitrust and state aid charges against companies such as Apple, Amazon and Starbucks.