Regulators Raid Google Seoul Office

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Regulators Raid Google Seoul Office

SEOUL—The Korean Fair Trade Commission raided the Seoul office of Google Inc. in connection with allegations of unfair trade in South Korea's mobile-search-engine market, a person with direct knowledge of the matter said, the latest in a series of probes into Google's operations globally.

Tuesday's raid was part of an investigation by the antitrust regulator into accusations by Korean portal operators NHN Corp. and Daum Communications Corp. that Google is limiting their access to smartphones using the Android operating system.

The person familiar with the matter declined to provide further details of the raid.

Google has faced a series of investigations in South Korea in recent months that have mainly focused on allegations of the collection of private information. Regulators around the world and several U.S. state attorneys general are also investigating possible privacy breaches by Google. They are focusing on whether Google street-mapping teams collected and stored passwords, emails and other personal information collected from unprotected wireless Internet networks around the world.

The latest allegation in South Korea takes aim at the Google search engine on Android phones. Daum and NHN say the U.S. Internet company is restricting local mobile-service-providers and Android smartphone manufacturers from preloading some search portals on smartphones. The Korean search portals say this makes it inconvenient for users to switch to a different search window, and thus provides Google with a competitive advantage.

"It does not allow fair competition among search engines if Android-based smartphone users come across Google Search whenever they touch the search engine icon, whether they want it or not," a spokesman for NHN said.

Google declined to confirm the raid but said it would cooperate with the investigation.

"We will work with the KFTC to address any questions they may have about our business," a Google spokesman said in a statement.

"Android is an open platform, and carrier and OEM [original equipment manufacturer] partners are free to decide which applications and services to include on their Android phones. We do not require carriers or manufacturers to include Google Search or Google applications on Android-powered devices," the spokesman said.

NHN's Naver is South Korea's dominant Internet portal. As of January, Naver accounted for 52% of South Korea's mobile-search-engine market, followed by Google's 16% and Daum's 15%, according to South Korean market research company Matrix Mobile Index.

In May, South Korean police raided Google's Seoul office following allegations that Google's AdMob platform was used to illegally collect private data about users' geographical locations. In August 2010 the National Police Agency launched an investigation into whether Google collected and stored private information illegally while it prepared for the South Korean launch of its street-mapping service.

Both investigations remain open but the Korea Communications Commission told both Apple Inc. and Google's Korean units last month to prevent the saving of the locations of handset users without data encryption.

Separately, Chinese regulators renewed a key license for Google, suggesting that authorities continue to accept the way the company has restructured its local operations to stop censoring its own Chinese-language search results. Visitors to Google's Chinese search site in China are currently routed to the company's Hong Kong-based site.