Turkey for Christmas, but it won’t be getting any Google Apps


So, very much like “the Huawei problem” and the Trump Trade block which is preventing Google Apps from appearing on upcoming Huawei phones – Turkey will soon have the same issue.

Google started having a few issues in Turkey after Russian internet company Yandex decided to file an official complaint. The Turkish competition board opened an investigation, but there’s a bit of history to this. Back in 2018 Turkey told Google to ensure that different search engines could be chosen for their Android devices. They gave Google 6 months to achieve this and whacked a fine of around £13.3m.

However, fast-forward to now and – following the Yandex complaint (they’re a search engine by the way), Turkey has ruled that the Google changes (made following the earlier complaint) are still not enough – users simply can’t change search engines.

If there’s no resolution, new Android phones released in Turkey just won’t have those all-important Google apps. No YouTube. No Gmail. No Google Play store.

Google have told us that …

Consumers will be able to purchase existing device models and will be able to use their devices and applications normally. Google’s other services will be unaffected.

So, a waiting game then… we’ll keep an eye on things.