Google’s billing policy anti-competitive, NCLAT rules

An appeals court Friday agreed with India’s antitrust regulator that Google’s app store billing policy was unfair and restrictive for developers, in a setback for the Alphabet Inc. company.

The Competition Commission of India in October 2022 had asked the US tech giant not to discriminate against other apps using third-party billing or payment-processing services on its Android Play Store, and fined it Rs 940 crores ($110 million).

The National Companies Law Appellate Tribunal, however, lowered the penalty on Google to Rs 220 crore even as it upheld the CCI’s charge that Google was “abusing” its dominant position on the Android mobile app store.

It did give Google some respite as it nullified some of the directions issued by the CCI such as a requirement for the company to spell out a clear policy on data that is collected on its platform and the use of such data.

India is a key growth market for Google where more than 90% of the country’s roughly 700 million smartphone users are on its Android operating system. A clampdown by regulators in the world’s most populous nations isn’t good news for Google, though the penalty in India is small change compared to the record €4.3-billion fine European Union antitrust watchdogs slapped the company with.

Google representatives in India didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.