Manufacturers will pay Google in Europe to include Google Play Store on their mobiles

It is an essential resource. How many times do you access the Google Play Store? Whether you want to download new applications, update them or download interesting content, this is an essential service. The point is that mobile phone manufacturers have to pay for it.

The Verge has just published a rate table – initially confidential – that talks about licenses of up to 35 euros per device to install the set of applications that make up Google services.These are new rates that will be applied as of February 1, 2019.

Manufacturers could reach agreements

Fortunately, it appears that device manufacturers would not need to pay these fees. At least not in principle, because Google would offer them the possibility of reaching different agreements, independently, with the aim of cover part of the prices that these licenses would have

And in reality, we would not only be talking about the Google Play Store. But also from Google Chrome or even the Google search system. At the moment the Mountain View company has not wanted to offer any explanation in this regard.

But why have Google's terms changed?

As explained by The Verge itself, the terms of the licenses for Google services have been modified due to a new ruling by the European Commission at the end of this same month.

This ruling prohibits the company from requiring mobile phone manufacturers to bundle Chrome and perform Google searches through their applications. At the moment, the firm has not wanted to talk about what the new rates for licenses will be like, but the terms of the agreement and prices will be evaluated according to each country and the pixel density of each device.

At the moment, the document that The Verge has had the opportunity to access specifies different rates, up to three levels. For example, there are countries with higher rates, such as the United Kingdom, Sweden, Germany, Norway and the Netherlands.In this case, manufacturers who also have a pixel density greater than 500 ppi will have to pay up to 35 euros for the license of the Google suite of applications.

Devices with between 400 and 500 ppi will pay a fee of 18 euros, while those with less than 400 ppi only They will have to pay 9 euros. It may be that in some countries these rates are much lower, so that for a basic range phone you only pay a little more than 2 euros.

There is also another clause that could affect manufacturers who decide not to pre-install Google's browser,Chrome, because in this In this case, the company would not give them the incentive that it usually offers to encourage the use of Google as a search service and all the applications linked to the giant's services.

The European Commission ruling does not oblige Google to charge license fees, but it does urge Google to break the package of applications that we normally find installed on any Android device.For the European court, bundling the Chrome search system on Android is detrimental to the opportunities of device manufacturers to reach new and advantageous agreements with other browsers and search engines that may arrive pre-installed on the equipment.