(Bloomberg) -- South Korea fined Alphabet Inc.’s Google 42.1 billion won ($32 million) for using its clout in the mobile app market to squeeze out a rival, as scrutiny intensifies on the software giant’s bid to expand its global reach.

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Google tried to block Korean platform rival One Store Co.’s business development, Korea’s Fair Trade Commission said in an e-mailed statement Tuesday. Google allegedly asked Korea’s major game companies including NCSoft Corp. and Netmarble Corp., as well as smaller firms and Chinese companies, to exclusively release their new games in Google’s Play Store, in return for Google promoting their games and providing further support abroad.

Google featuring a game on its top pages was seen as crucial for Korean game companies’ success in expanding overseas, where many of their games’ visibility is low, the FTC said.

Such actions by Google began in June 2016, when One Store started in Korea and continued through April 2018, when the watchdog launched the probe, the regulator said. Those activities hindered One Store’s ability to attract new games and resulted in a drop in sales during the period, it said. Google earned around 1.8 trillion won in sales through this activity, the FTC estimated.

Google’s “actions differ from normal marketing activities,” Yu Seong Wook, director general for the commission’s Anti-Monopoly Bureau, said at a briefing. “Google’s intention was to exclude One Store from the market, which it saw as a strong competitor.”

Google’s rebuttal to accusations of anti-competitive behavior has been to say that’s it an open platform and it doesn’t prevent other app stores from competing. The company points users to apps from its Play Store because that’s where it can provide the best security and oversight, it says.