The Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) is looking into Alphabet’s Google over potential antitrust issues as dating apps complain of not being able to use payment methods other than Google’s, a report from Reuters said Wednesday (May 4).
The report says Match group, which owns Tinder, has asked the regulator to see whether Google has abused a dominant position in the dating app market. ACM spokesperson Murco Mijlnlieff said that dating-app providers “allegedly are no longer able to use a payment system other than Google’s payment system.”
A Google spokesperson said the company charges customers 15% commission for subscriptions through Google Play, which it said was the lowest rate of the major app platforms. Google added that app distributors can avoid Google Play, if they distribute their apps through other stores or websites.
This all comes as the Dutch ACM is still embattled with Google competitor Apple over alternate means of pay for dating apps too.
The report said Apple has gotten fined €50 million, which is the maximum possible under the current court decision, over its failure to comply with an ACM order to make it possible for apps to pay with non-Apple methods.
The ACM has said Apple’s recent ideas to fix the problem hadn’t been sufficient. As such, the regulator is preparing a new order that will have new payment penalties.
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Apple has said it thinks it already sufficiently followed the ACM’s orders, and didn’t comment further.
See also: Canada Next to Force Google, Facebook to Pay for News
In similar news, Canada announced a proposed bill to force big tech companies like Facebook and Google to negotiate with news publishers, paying them for using their content, in line with what other countries like Australia, France and Spain are doing.
Called the Online News Act, it would make companies such as Alphabet and Meta pay Canadian media publishers for allowing connections to news content on their platforms.
The advertising revenue for newspapers, lawmakers say, has been disproportionately going to big tech giants.
