Google has agreed to pay a penalty of 55 million Australian dollars (approximately $36 million USD) after admitting to engaging in anti-competitive conduct with Australia’s two largest telecommunications providers, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) announced on Monday.

According to the ACCC, Google’s Asia-Pacific division based in Singapore entered into agreements with Telstra and Optus that prevented the installation of rival search engines on Android devices sold to customers.

These deals, which remained in effect for 15 months until March 2021, ensured that Google Search was the sole pre-installed search engine on the devices.

In return, the telecom companies received a share of the advertising revenue generated from user searches made through Google’s platform.