In a departure from President Trump’s previous attitude towards Silicon Valley, Trump on Thursday tweeted a defense of Google against a fine levied by the European Union.
In his tweet, Trump said, “I told you so! The European Union just slapped a Five Billion Dollar fine on one of our great companies, Google. They truly have taken advantage of the U.S., but not for long!”
The $5 billion fine against Google’s parent company, Alphabet, came on Wednesday as European regulators decided that Google’s mobile operating system, Android, was violating antitrust laws by having its Chrome browser and other apps pre-installed on its phones.
Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, wrote a blog post explaining Google’s side:
Today, because of Android, a typical phone comes preloaded with as many as 40 apps from multiple developers, not just the company you bought the phone from. If you prefer other apps—or browsers, or search engines—to the preloaded ones, you can easily disable or delete them, and choose other apps instead, including apps made by some of the 1.6 million Europeans who make a living as app developers.
In fact, a typical Android phone user will install around 50 apps themselves. Last year, over 94 billion apps were downloaded globally from our Play app store; browsers such as Opera Mini and Firefox have been downloaded more than 100 million times, UC Browser more than 500 million times.
Pichai also said Google intends to appeal the decision.
Trump coming out on the side of Google comes days after Google’s search results showed photos of Trump when users looked up the word “idiot.”
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