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South Korea's antitrust regulator is packaging up penalties on Naver Corp. and Google Inc. for abusing their market dominance in web search and operating system, respectively.

The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) is wrapping up its decision after probes into the two giant platform companies on allegations that they have ventured into other business sectors by capitalizing on their market power, according to a government official on Wednesday.

The FTC plans to file complaint on Naver for using its dominance in the web portal market to pitch its online shopping and video services by placing them at the top of its search results, and thus gained an unfair profit from it.

The FTC imposed a penalty on the Korean search engine in 2008 on similar charges, but it lost its case against Naver in the Supreme Court in 2014, where judges ruled the web portal and video service markets were divided and thus Naver could not have an absolute influence on the video service market.

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To make its case better, the FTC plans to argue on the perspective of abuse of superior bargaining to support its decision that Naver’s dominance in the web portal market affected the other market.

The FTC is also planning to raise the issue that Google has forced domestic mobile game companies not to use other app market platforms.

The web industry, however, does not expect the FTC’s sanctions against Naver would be severe because Naver's market share in the video service market is a mere 1 percent. Naver and Google declined to comment as the FTC’s decision has yet to be confirmed.

[ⓒ Maeil Business Newspaper & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]