Google's brush with India's antitrust watchdog, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) is nothing new. Google has faced its ire over its practices in the Smart TV segment and in the Android segment. Google has also sued CCI in the past over leaked reports.
Now, the CCI has ordered an investigation into Google following allegations from news publishers that it had indulged in “abuse of dominance in news aggregation” and forced unfair terms on digital news publishers. The CCI said that its initial view was that Google had broken some antitrust laws.
It may be recalled that in a similar case last year Australia passed a law that required tech platforms like Google and Facebook to fairly pay local media outlets for linking their content in news feeds or search results. France too mandated platforms like Google to compensate news publishers for previews of news content.
- CCI terms WhatsApp privacy policy 'exploitative'
- Future Retail deal: Amazon dragged to India's antitrust watchdog again
Google abused its dominant position: News publishers
In its complaint, the Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA), the umbrella outfit of leading Indian digital media companies, said a majority of the traffic on news websites comes from online search engines, wherein Google is the most dominant and consequently gets to decide the share of ad revenues to be paid to digital news publishers.
The DNPA alleged that Google had 'abused' its dominant position in news aggregation leading to advertising losses for publishers, to the extent that they receive only 51% of the advertising spend.
The DNPA alleged that Google unilaterally decides the amount to be paid to the publishers for the content created by them, as well as the terms on which the amounts have to be paid.
Google not only has a monopolistic position in search in India, it also has a very strong position in advertising intermediation and controls/retains the major share at each level, the DNPA claimed.
CCI report in 60 days
The CCI, in its order, said: “In view of Google’s market position in the online digital advertising intermediation services, the alleged unilateral and non-transparent determination and sharing of ad revenues appears to be an imposition of unfair conditions on publishers.”
"It needs to be examined whether the use of snippets by Google is a result of bargaining power imbalance between Google and the news publishers on the other, and whether it affects the referral traffic to news publisher websites, and thus, their monetization abilities," the CCI order added.
It appears that Google is using its dominant position in the relevant markets to enter/protect its position in the market for news aggregation service, the CCI said and ordered its director general to probe the allegations and submit the investigation report within 60 days from the date of the receipt of the order.
Google is already under CCI radar for its play store policy through it levies significant commission on app developers.
Want to know about the latest happenings in tech? Follow TechRadar India on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram!
