Google’s decision by the Japan Fair Trade Commission: Early Reflections
Google’s ‘Be Evil,’ transformation (if it is not just a narrative), and the antitrust attempts to avenge (if not exact retribution) are not new. Judge Leonie Brinkema of Eastern District of Virginia delivered a landmark decision in April, this time targeting Google’s digital advertising business model. This was following Judge Amit Mehta’s historic 2024 ruling by the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia. Of course, these cases were preceded by the EU’s pioneering decisions, such as Google Shopping, Android, and AdSense.
While Judge Brinkema’s latest ruling has drawn most of the spotlight lately, there has also been a noteworthy development in Japan. On April 15, for the first time in a formal infringement decision accompanied by a cease-and-desist order against a Big Tech company, the Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) found that Google violated Japan’s competition law, commonly referred to as the Anti-Monopoly Act (AMA), through contracts with smartphone makers and mobile carriers aimed at promoting its search engine and Chrome browser.
Although the JFTC’s decision may not appear particularly novel–largely echoing competition concerns already well documented and addressed in other jurisdictions, notably the EU’s Google Android case–it nonetheless deserves attention. This case not only contributes to global efforts to rein-in tech giants but also gives rise cautious optimism that Japan’s enforcement of competition laws may be entering a proactive phase. (However, as I will note in the end of this article, such cautious optimism has been somewhat tempered by concern, about whether any significant change will actually take place.) The practices that were challenged by the JFTC did not differ significantly from those sanctioned
in July 2018 by the European Commission. In its 2018 decision the Commission found that three contractual practices were anticompetitive. These included MADAs (Multi-Agreement Distribution Agreements), RSAs (Restrictive Sales Agreements), and AFAs. These findings (except the RSAs) were broadly upheld by the General Court in September 2022.
Similarly, in October 2023, a year after the General Court’s decision, the JFTC launched
an enforcement action against Google alleging that the first two practices, MADAs and RSAs, had the potential to exclude competitors or restrict other firms’ business activities, thereby violating the AMA. Just a year and a half after the announcement, in April 2025, the JFTC issued its formal decision finding that the two practices violated Article 19 of the AMA, which prohibits unfair trade practices (UTPs).
Specifically, the JFTC identified the following two practices as illegal, implemented since July 2020 (Decision, p.8):(MADAs). In a situation in which pre-installing Google Play for Android smartphone manufacturers was deemed ‘necessary,’ since (i) Android users ‘typically install apps via app stores’, (ii), Google Play was the’most widely used’ of them (Decision, page 6), the JFTC conditionally licensed the Play Store to Android smartphone makers who agreed to preinstall Google Search, Chrome, (Decision, pp. (Decision, pp. In exchange for sharing revenue from search advertising, manufacturers and mobile carriers of Play Store licensed Android smartphones are required to comply with certain conditions that favor Google’s search and browsing services. These include excluding and restricting any other search services and setting Google Search and Chrome defaults and/or placing these services in an advantageous position. (For details, see Decision, pp. The practices were found, amongst the various types UTPs, to impose restrictive conditions as defined and prohibited in paragraph 12 of General Designation(GD). The paragraph defines “trading on conditions that unjustly restrict trade between a party and its other transacting parties or other business activities” as a UTP prohibited by Article 19 of AMA. The GD is a JFTC notice issued pursuant to Article (2(9)(vi), which designates specific UTPs not explicitly listed in Article 2(9) (i) to v). While the latter statutory UTPs must be sanctioned with administrative fines (see Articles 20-2 to 20-6 of the AMA), the designated UTPs under the GD are not subject to such financial penalties.
Upon finding the violation, the JFTC ordered Google to stop the practices and imposed several behavioral remedies, including passing a board resolution to end the conduct, notifying business partners about the changes, and training staff, as well as appointing an independent third party to monitor compliance for five years and submit reports annually. No fine was imposed.
- Among other aspects, what I find particularly noteworthy in this case is that the JFTC addressed Google’s practices–widely challenged around the world–not through concerns over dominance or market power, which could have been pursued under Article 3 of the AMA (akin to illegal monopolization under Section 2 of the Sherman Act or the prohibition of abuse under Article 102 TFEU), but through the frame of UTPs. The practical and legal implications of this approach will be discussed below.
Legal DiscussionLegally speaking, the application of UTP framework, by framing the conduct as the imposition of restrictive conditions, entails that Google’s practices were sanctioned not because they substantially restricted competition, but because they only lessened it. (Not all UTPs require a reduction in competition. See Masako Wakui, (2018)
pp. 141-142 for a quick overview. )
As far as I am aware, the threshold in Japan for establishing a lesser competition is lower than that for finding a substantial restraint of competition. This is similar to the doctrine of incipient violations under Section 5 of U.S. Federal Trade Commission Act (FTC), which prohibits unfair competition methods (UMC). It is debatable whether UMC, beyond its historical origins, can be used as a yardstick for UTPs. However, at least following the stance of the FTC’s 2022 Policy Statement
, which departed from the rescinded 2015 Statement’s
narrower approach and embraced a broader interpretation of UMC, I find that it still offers a meaningful point of comparison with the UTP framework in Japan.
Once a practice is framed as a (lessening-competition-type) UTP, the burden of proof borne by the JFTC becomes considerably lighter–even though administrative fines cannot be imposed for those designated UTPs, as mentioned above. No market definition is needed, and there is no need to conduct a full-scale anti-competitive analysis. The JFTC may establish a violation without having to prove a “substantial restriction of competition” (required for private monopolization, under Article 2(5) AMA). This is equivalent to establishing or strengthening market dominant power. Additionally, the “restrictive condition” under paragraph 12 of the GD need not take the form of ‘exclusive’ dealing (unlike paragraph 11 of the GD, which does).Indeed, the Google decision illustrates this point. In the section on the consequences of the conduct, which is less than half a webpage, the JFTC merely stated that at least 80% (excluding Pixel phones), of Android smartphones sold in Japan had the Google Search app pre-installed and Chrome browser, with their icons or widgets placed on the home screen. In Chrome’s case the browser’s settings were selected to use Google search function. And that more than 50% ( If the JFTC had conducted a more detailed economic analysis and market definition as is common in other jurisdictions then the decision may have included discussions about the validity of the definition of the market, the existence and extent of market power and the ability of the conduct to exclude competitors. If the JFTC did so, then the decision would be much longer than its current 16-page version. I am merely describing the JFTC’s concise approach in this case. Deliberation is important as a rule, and especially in light of the legitimacy that competition law enforcement has. In fact, i personally find that the case was resolved without a detailed assessment. This raises some legitimacy-related questions, namely whether this approach revealed the competitive harm caused by the conduct in issue, and whether it served as a precedent that could guide firms to self-assess their conduct and modify it appropriately in the future. In any case, the absence requirements for sophisticated market analysis and full-scale impacts analysis may make the UTP ban seem like an ideal tool for competition authorities who want to modify the practices large tech platforms, without having to bear a heavy burden. Saiko Nakajima is a senior digital investigator at the JFTC. She reportedly stated that they chose the UTP tool because it was a quick way to address the issue (given the dramatic changes in the market due to the rise of generative AI). Other experts have also commented that this choice of framework could have been made to reduce the JFTC’s risk of losing the case in court. As a purely personal observation, considering the ongoing efforts by other competition authorities to ease the evidentiary burden in abuse cases (for instance, the EU’s current discussions
on ‘naked restrictions’ in the context of abuse) and assuming that such efforts are seen as legitimate and necessary, the fact that the JFTC already has such an efficient and flexible tool, and has made effective use of it, might be worth celebrating. Some Early Reflections
Given the JFTC’s traditionally milder approach (the JFTC has resolved most cases through commitments or voluntary measures, see Simon Vande Walle’s summary
of the JFTC’s enforcement record from 2013 to 2022) compared to that of its counterparts (see my comparison
of enforcement in Korea and Japan, at 14-15), the fact that it has now issued its first formal infringement decision against a major Big Tech company is certainly encouraging. This case is important not only because it contributes towards global efforts to rein-in tech giants but also because it raises the expectation for a more aggressive enforcement stance by the JFTC in the future. The necessity or justification for ex ante platforms regulation in Japan is a question that I find unsettling. According to a previous article by Alba Ribera Martinez, Japan introduced the SSCPA in response to the EU’s Digital Markets Act. The JFTC is now set to enforce it by designating
Google (as an OS, app store, browser, and search engine operator) and Apple (as an OS, app store, and browser operator) in March 2025, and undoubtedly, this Google decision will embolden the JFTC’s further enforcement of the SSCPA, which will enter fully into force by the end of this year.
Assuming that there is a market failure in Japan’s mobile ecosystem jointly dominated by Google and Apple (setting aside counterarguments for now), enabling such an effective governmental response could undoubtedly be a welcome development. Before celebrating too soon, it’s worth asking if, and why, Japan had to introduce the SSCPA at all. After all, unlike the EU it already had a tool for competition law, the UTPs ban, which, at least in theory, can address concerns more flexibly, and across a wider scope. The SSCPA will not cover issues such those arising from RSAs. In order to justify competition-related regulation, it is important that two conditions are met. First, there must be a market failure. Second, the competition law is not sufficient to address this failure, whether in its statutory or practical application. While still purely theoretical, I believe that the suspected (but not yet established) unworkability in practice of the AMA can be attributed to several institutional, organization, and/or politic factors. The reasons for this could be a lack in incentives for enforcement to try more experimental enforcement methods, especially when they face the risk of losing a court case; budget and staffing constraints at the agency; the conservative interpretation of competition laws by the judiciary, particularly in monopolization cases; or a lack in public support for implementing enforcing policies that are assertive. It is not clear which of these explanations will prove to be the most convincing. It is important to note that if these deeper and hardly resolved obstacles are indeed the cause of the AMA’s inability to function, then the global contribution, and revitalization, of Japan’s enforcement of competition–which I cautiously hoped through the recent Google case–may be hindered, at a fundamental level. If these barriers exist, then they will likely undermine the SSCPA over time. Not to mention any future appeals and other major enforcement actions that may follow the Google decision. This gives me pause. It is noteworthy not only because the case is part of global efforts to tighten antitrust scrutiny of Big Tech but also because the case raises hope for a more vigorous competition enforcement in Japan while at the same highlighting persistent and perhaps systemic barriers that could continue to impede progress. This case seems to stand at the intersection of promise and constraint, after all.______* I would like to thank Professor Masako Wakui of Kyoto University for her insightful comments and generous discussions. The author is solely responsible for any errors or inaccuracies. This piece was written in support of the author’s JSPS-funded research.
