In a blog post responding to the charges, Google senior vice president and general counsel Kent Walker said the Android "business model keeps manufacturers’ costs low and their flexibility high, while giving consumers unprecedented control of their mobile devices."

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Google's partner agreements are "entirely voluntary" and "anyone can use Android without Google," he wrote.

Android maintains a far greater global share of the mobile operating market than its chief rival, Apple's iOS. One reason it has taken off is that Google offers the basic open-source operating system for free, which makes it the software of choice for many lower-cost phones from a slew of manufacturers. Google's mobile operating system has a market share of more than 90 percent in the European Union, according to the European Commission.

The company then profits from mobile in other ways, such as advertising built into its products, including Search, as well as taking a cut of sales made through its Google Play app store.

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According to the commission, Google obliges smartphone makers who want to pre-install Google's popular app store to also pre-install Search and set it as the default search engine on those devices. And the manufacturers who want Google's Play Store or Search also have to pre-install Google's Chrome browser.

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"Thereby, Google has ensured that Google Search and Google Chrome are pre-installed on the significant majority of devices sold" in the European Union, the European Commission said.

The new European charges over Android, which stem from an inquiry launched last April, mark the latest in a series of face-offs between European regulators and U.S. tech companies.

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Google has already been the target of many other European investigations, including a separate set of antitrust charges that accuse the company of favoring its shopping comparison tools in search results.

The European Union is still weighing that case; Google has 12 weeks to respond to the latest charges. In both cases, the European Union could levy penalties of as much as 10 percent of the company's worldwide annual revenue -- potentially leading to fines totaling roughly $14 billion dollars if the company loses them.