Action on Google for the second time, India imposed a penalty of Rs 936.44 crore
The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has once again fined Google. Google has been fined Rs 936.44 crore for violating market competition rules in its Play Store policy. Earlier, the Competition Commission of India had imposed a fine of Rs 1337.76 crore on Google.
The Competition Commission of India (CCI) on Tuesday imposed a fine of Rs 936.44 crore on internet technology and search engine giant Google for violating market competition rules in its Play Store policy. The commission has also directed Google to revise its conduct within the stipulated time frame.
App stores across digital platforms have become an essential medium for developers of digital apps to take the app to the users who use it. This app store is directly dependent on the OS (operating system) of the smart phone.
The CCI has said that in India, Google dominates the market for licensable OS for smart mobile devices and App Store for Android smart mobile OS and its owners take advantage of their dominance.
The commission has said that for app developers, the sale of in-app digital goods is an important means of earning money from their inventions and innovations. In order to deliver in-app digital goods to users who purchase them, developers are required to configure (connect) their apps with Google’s payment system under the Google App Store policy to allow all purchases of digital goods through Google’s payment system. be through which processes that transaction.
The Commission has observed that Play Store policies require that app developers only and compulsorily use Google Play’s billing system (GPBS) not only for apps (and audio, audio, and audio) distributed/sold through the Google Play Store. This is the requirement for payment of certain in-app purchases made by the users after downloading/purchasing the app from Playstore.
In accordance with the Policy, App Developers may not provide Users within the App a direct link to a webpage with an alternative payment method or use language that encourages the User to purchase digital items outside the App. Google has termed various such policies of the App Store against competition law.
According to the commission’s release, it has also investigated allegations of exclusion of rival UPI apps as an effective payment option on the Play Store. It was found that Google Pay is integrated with intent flow methodology while other UPI apps can be used through collect flow method. Google has told the Commission that it recently changed its policy and allowed rival UPI apps to integrate with Intent Flow.
The CCI has concluded that making app developers dependent on mandatory use of GPBS was found to be in violation of the provisions of the Competition Act.
The commission said that Google complied with discriminatory practice by not using its payment system GPBS for its own applications (apps) such as YouTube.
