Big win for startups as Google withdraws plea against CCI probe into billing system
The Delhi High Court on Thursday allowed tech giant Google to withdraw its appeal against a single-judge order directing the Competition Commission of India (CCI) to take up the applications moved by the Alliance of Digital India Foundation (ADIF) challenging Google’s new in-app user choice billing policy.
Senior advocate Sajan Poovayya, appearing for Google, apprised the High Court that CCI now has required quorum and has commenced hearing on pleas filed by ADIF.
Poovayya requested the High Court to not close the question of laws raised in the appeal. The withdrawal was not objected to by the counsel appearing on behalf of CCI.
It may be recalled that a division bench of Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Subramonium Prasad had issued notice on the appeal filed by Google in April this year.
Earlier, a single-judge bench of Justice Tushar Rao Gedela had asked the CCI to decide on or before April 26 the application filed by ADIF.
The plea filed by the petitioner alliance — having startups like Matrimony.com, TrulyMadly, Paytm, Shaadi.com, and others on board — claimed that despite the user using third-party payment processors, Google will be charging “service fee” at a 4 percent reduced rate from the developer for transactions which happen via non-GPBS (Google Play Billing System) under the garb of new pricing policy.
It is the petitioner’s case that the app developers, despite not using GPBS, will have to pay almost the same commissions (11-26 percent) to Google.
In an order passed in October last year, CCI directed Google to not impose any condition on app developers that is unfair, unreasonable, or discriminatory to the services provided to them.
It had also imposed a penalty of Rs.936.44 crore on Google in a separate case for abusing its dominant position concerning its Play Store policies, apart from issuing a cease-and-desist order.
[With Inputs from IANS]
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