The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) has said that it will begin hearing Google’s appeal against the order by the Competition Commission of India (CCI) that imposes a penalty of Rs. 936 crores on the tech giant for abusing its dominant position in the playstore ecosystem. The NCLAT has also asked start-ups contesting the order to file their responses to Google’s appeal within the next four weeks.
Earlier, on January 11, the NCLAT refused to grant immediate relief to Google upon request with regards to CCI’s order and issued the final hearing to be set in April 2023. Google did file an appeal in the Supreme Court against the NCLAT order but ended up withdrawing the case.
The CCI has penalized Google for restricting app developers from using any third party payment or billing services for in-app billing on Google’s Play Store.
As per the CCI, the fact that app developers needed to use the Google Play Billing System (GPBS) for in-app purchases to gain access to the Play Store was an unfair condition imposed by the tech giant. Furthermore, the CCI also stated that Google was following discriminatory practices by not using its own GBPS for its platform YouTube.
Mandatory imposition of GPBS disturbs innovation incentives and the ability of both the payment processors as well as app developers. It was held that imposing GPBS also results in the denial of market access for payment aggregators as well as app developers.
The CCI concluded that the practices followed by Google resulted in leveraging its dominance in the market for licensable mobile OS and app stores for Android OS, to protect its position.