So, very much like “the Huawei problem” and the Trump Trade block which is preventing Google Apps from appearing on upcoming Huawei phones – Turkey will soon have the same issue.
Google started having a few issues in Turkey after Russian internet company Yandex decided to file an official complaint. The Turkish competition board opened an investigation, but there’s a bit of history to this. Back in 2018 Turkey told Google to ensure that different search engines could be chosen for their Android devices. They gave Google 6 months to achieve this and whacked a fine of around £13.3m.
However, fast-forward to now and – following the Yandex complaint (they’re a search engine by the way), Turkey has ruled that the Google changes (made following the earlier complaint) are still not enough – users simply can’t change search engines.
If there’s no resolution, new Android phones released in Turkey just won’t have those all-important Google apps. No YouTube. No Gmail. No Google Play store.
Google have told us that …
Consumers will be able to purchase existing device models and will be able to use their devices and applications normally. Google’s other services will be unaffected.
So, a waiting game then… we’ll keep an eye on things.