CCI order: Google to go ahead with new billing policy

Google LLC said it would go ahead with its billing policies in India, even as startups continue to contest the “unfair” systems of the tech behemoth.

“In 2020, we clarified the requirements of our payments policy, and developers in India have had considerable time to make the necessary changes to their apps,” it said in a blog post on Wednesday. “We’re respectfully following the CCI’s October 2022 order, and in compliance with that order, we expanded user choice billing to all developers in India and updated our policy that went into effect starting April 26, 2023.”

Google said that as the deadline of April 26 had now passed, it would be taking “necessary steps” to get developers to implement one of the billing options it offers.

The three routes are:

• Using Google Play’s billing system.
• Offer an alternative billing system called the user choice billing system alongside Google Play’s billing system for users in India.
• Operate on a consumption-only basis without paying a service fee, even if it is part of a paid service.

Google said it continued to “comply with local laws and cooperate with local proceedings, as applicable”.

Applying a service fee is a “sensible model as the platform only makes money when a developer makes money, so our success is aligned with theirs”, it said.

Google said that for a majority of developers, its fees are 15% or less—the lowest rates of any major app store. “To further put this in context, we estimate less than 60 of the over 2,00,000 Indian developers on Google Play currently could pay a service fee of above 15%,” it said. “And this fee is further reduced by 4% if a user pays through an alternative billing system to fairly reflect that Google Play’s billing system has not been used.”

The Alliance for Digital India Foundation, which counts Paytm and Matrimony.com Ltd. among its members, has argued that Google’s in-app billing policy and the new user choice billing policy are both unfair. It had demanded that the Competition Commission of India look at the new billing policy by invoking the doctrine of necessity.

The Delhi High Court had also ruled that the CCI could invoke the doctrine of necessity to examine if tech major Google’s Play Store service fee is anti-competitive. Bloomberg