he tech Google was fined around 202 billion rupiah ($12.4 million) by Indonesia’s antitrust regulator on Tuesday for engaging in unfair business practices pertaining to its payment system services for the Google Play Store, which is its software distribution platform.
TakeAway Points:
- Google was fined around 202 billion rupiah ($12.4 million) by Indonesia’s antitrust regulator for engaging in unfair business practices.
- The agency said it found that Google had charged a fee of up to 30% via Google Play Billing.
- Quantum startup SandboxAQ announced Tuesday that its large quantitative models (LQMs) will be accessible on Google Cloud.
Indonesia’s antitrust regulator fines Google
The agency launched an investigation into Alphabet Inc.’s Google in 2022 on suspicion it had abused its dominant position by requiring Indonesian app developers to use Google Play Billing at higher rates than other payment systems or face removal from the Google Play Store.
The panel said in a hearing that the systems reduced developers’ earnings as they led to the reduction of users, adding that Google had been found breaking Indonesia’s law against monopoly.
The agency found that Google had charged a fee of up to 30% via Google Play Billing, the panel said.
Google controlled a 93% market share in the country of 280 million people, which has a fast-growing digital economy, the agency said.
A Google spokesperson said on Wednesday the company would appeal the ruling.
“Our current practices foster a healthy, competitive Indonesian app ecosystem,” the spokesperson said, adding it was committed to complying with Indonesian law.
Google has previously said it had introduced a system where developers could offer users an alternative billing option.
The tech giant has been fined more than 8 billion euros ($8.3 billion) by the European Union in the last decade for anti-competitive practices related to its price comparison service, Android mobile operating system and advertising service.
Google adds SandboxAQ’s quantitative AI models to cloud offerings
Quantum startup SandboxAQ said its large quantitative models (LQMs) will be available on Google Cloud, the company said on Tuesday, as cloud providers look to AI tech to fuel growth.
LQMs are designed to handle large-scale numerical datasets, perform complex calculations and statistical analysis, and can be used to develop sophisticated financial models or to automate trading strategies.
The partnership will make it easier for enterprises to use Google Cloud to develop its LQMs and deploy them, allowing Sandbox, a firm spun off from Google-parent Alphabet in 2022, to expand the distribution of its platform to a larger pool of potential customers.
“More than 80% of the economy is run by math and quantitative relationships. And that’s where quantitative AI really shines, and it’s very complementary to language models,” CEO SandboxAQ, Jack Hidary, said.
This is the first time Sandbox will have its models available on a third-party platform.
The Palo Alto-based startup secured $300 million in a funding round last month, boosting its valuation to $5.6 billion and was backed by investor firms including Fred Alger Management, T. Rowe Price, and Breyer Capital.
SandboxAQ said its models are used in sectors such as life sciences, financial services and navigation.
Google has been intensifying its efforts in quantum computing and announced in December that it had made significant progress by developing a new generation of quantum chips, overcoming a major challenge in the field.
Microsoft also touted the potential of quantum computing earlier this month and unveiled its “Quantum Ready program”, while Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang said the technology’s practical use was likely two decades away.
