A Baemin Riders Center in Seoul on December 29th. yunhap news
The Fair Trade Commission will form a dedicated team to respond to unfair issues related to mobile application (app) markets and delivery apps. This is to respond to issues related to fair competition in the platform sector, such as the Google Play Store fee issue and the nation of delivery-Yogiyo mergers and acquisitions.
The Fair Trade Commission announced on the 18th that it will establish and operate the App Market subdivision and the O2O (Online to Offline) subdivision within the ICT team.
The dedicated ICT team is an organization designed to handle cases of unfair behavior that may occur in major domestic and foreign platforms and mobile companies and in the field of intellectual property rights.
The reason why the AppMarket·O2O subcommittee within the ICT team was newly created is because the need to further subdivide and examine it has increased due to the expanding influence of the platform field in the digital economy.
The main target of monitoring by the App Market Division is to hinder the emergence of a new mobile operating system (OS) and harm the competition between the app market and smart device markets. Examples include preventing app developers from launching products or services on competing app markets, or forcing them to use specific payment methods.
The controversy over a 30% increase in Google Play Store fees, which began in the second half of last year, has continued, and the need for surveillance has increased. The FTC is investigating Google’s in-app payment enforcement and 30% commission policy, apart from installing a dedicated team.
In the O2O platform division, △delivery, △accommodation, △online travel agency, which connects online and offline in a non-face-to-face economy, are the main targets of monitoring.
The Fair Trade Commission plans to look at the act of forcing platform operators to sell products or services under the most favorable transaction conditions on the platform they operate, or the act of adjusting algorithms that artificially adjust the exposure ranking on the platform. The monitoring of unfair behavior against platform workers such as delivery drivers is also strengthened.
Since its launch in November 2019, the FTC’s ICT team has completed investigations on seven cases, including algorithm adjustments related to Naver shopping and video.
Specifically, Google completed an investigation on the allegations of interfering with competing OS and presented an agenda to the plenary meeting. In addition, Daewoong Pharmaceutical’s allegations of interfering with the sale of cheap generic drugs by competitors, and Dolby’s abuse of patent rights by Dolby, which holds essential patents in the field of digital audio technology, will be investigated and deliberated by the committee.
Sejong = Park Se-in reporter [email protected]
News edited by Hankook Ilbo can also be viewed on Naver
