NCLAT hears Google’s appeal against Rs 936 crore penalty by CCI

The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) on May 7 started hearing tech giant Google’s appeal against the order by Competition Commission of India (CCI) imposing a penalty of Rs 936 crore for abusing its dominant position in the playstore ecosystem.

The appellate tribunal is expected to continue the hearing on May 8. Senior advocate Sajan Poovayya appeared for the tech giant and gave an overview of Google play store’s business model.

Poovayya started his arguments by stating that 97 percentage of the applications offered on the playstore are free. According to Poovayya, Google provides many services in addition just billing payment services, and spends spends heavily to maintain the playstore.

He added that Google also has processes in place to ensure that the applications on playstore are free from malware and that users have a seamless experience.

Google filed this appeal against the CCI order in January 2023, and the case has come up for final hearing nearly a year and a half after being filed.

On January 11 2023, the tribunal refused to grant immediate relief to Google against CCI’s order and posted the case for the final hearing in April 2023. While Google filed an appeal at the Supreme Court against the NCLAT order, it ultimately withdrew the case.

App developers are currently pursuing a litigation in CCI over allegation of Google violating the antitrust regulator’s directions.

The CCI on October 25, 2022, penalised the tech giant for restricting app developers from using any third-party billing or payment processing services to purchase apps for in-app billing on Google Play Store. Google Play Store is a digital distribution service operated and developed by Google, from where mobile apps are downloaded.

The CCI held that making access to Play Store, for app developers, dependent on mandatory usage of Google Play Billing System (GPBS) for paid apps and in-app purchases constitutes an imposition of an unfair condition on app developers. The CCI held that Google was following discriminatory practices by not using GPBS for its own application – YouTube. Moneycontrol