Tech behemoth gives up on its bid to have the Competition Commission of India look into Google Play Store service charges.
On Thursday, Google LLC decided not to appeal a single-judge judgement from the Delhi High Court that required the Competition Commission of India to consider applications from Indian startups over Google’s user-choice payment scheme.
An appeal was filed against the Delhi High Court’s ruling for the CCI to investigate whether Google’s Play Store service fee violated anti-competitive practice’s by using the necessity doctrine. When the CCI lacked a quorum to hear the plea, the Google lawyer told the court that the first order was made by a single judge. He did, however, add that the CCI now had a quorum and has been actively reviewing the companies’ plea. Google’s counsel expressed the company’s wish to drop the appeal while maintaining the status quo on the legal issues. Additionally, the CCI expressed that it had no issues with the withdrawal, and the court allowed Google to withdraw its appeal.
Following a petition challenging Google’s new billing mechanism brought by the Alliance of Digital India Foundation, the Delhi High Court heard proceedings on Thursday. Indian startups, represented by the ADIF, filed a challenge against Google’s user choice billing system, which was set to go into effect on April 26, earlier this year before the Delhi High Court. According to this arrangement, developers who use Google Play’s billing system must pay a 15%–30% service charge; alternative payment methods, like as UPI, have a lower commission of 11%–26%. The new policy, according to ADIF, is unfair because it charges developers a high service fee even if they choose to pursue other options, and it doesn’t significantly improve upon the commission system that was in place at the time.
