Google to Have 11th-Hour Call With EU Ahead of Android Fine

Aoife White, Bloomberg News

(Bloomberg) -- Google officials will have an 11th-hour conference call with the European Union’s competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager Tuesday ahead of a potentially record fine, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Google Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai will speak with Vestager by phone for a so-called state of play meeting, according to one of the people, who asked not to be named because the discussion is private.

The European Commission fine, set for Wednesday, will top last year’s record 2.4 billion-euro ($2.8 billion) penalty in Google’s shopping-search investigation, one of the people said.

EU officials have been investigating Google contracts that require manufacturers of Android phones to take a bundle of the company’s services when they want to license the Play app store. National competition authorities met earlier Tuesday to agree on the fine, one person said.

Google and the commission declined to comment.

--With assistance from Stephanie Bodoni.

To contact the reporter on this story: Aoife White in Brussels at awhite62@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anthony Aarons at aaarons@bloomberg.net, Peter Chapman, Giles Turner