- By Priyanka Payal
- Tue, 02 May 2023 05:26 PM (IST)
- Source:JND
AS THE GOVERNMENT prepares the ground to introduce a new Digital India Act, search engine giant Google has paid an amount worth Rs 1,337.76 crore as the entire penalty amount levied by the Competition Commission of India (CCI) in the Android case. This is probably the first case of a big tech company paying a hefty penalty to the Indian regulators.
Sources told IANS that the entire penalty amount has been deposited in the Consolidated Fund of India, within the 30-day deadline given by the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) in its order.
The Indian market regulator CCI imposed a penalty on Google in October 2022 for allegedly misusing its dominant position in the Android market.
Earlier this year, the tech giant announced to comply with the CCI's directives for Android.
"The CCI's recent directives for Android and Play require us to make significant changes for India, and we've informed the CCI of how we will be complying with their directives," Google had said in a statement.
Google also said: “We’re updating the Android compatibility requirements to introduce changes for partners to build non-compatible or forked variants.”
Developers can permit users to choose a different billing method besides Google Play's billing method when they purchase in-app digital content by using user-choice billing.
The changes came after a Supreme Court bench held that the CCI findings cannot be said to be "without jurisdiction or with manifest error" and affirmed the NCLAT order, rejecting to grant any interim relief to Google.
The bench gave Google seven day window to deposit 10% of the Rs 1,337.76 crore fine imposed by the CCI and directed the NCLAT to rule on Google's appeal by March 31.
The tech company had alleged that the CCI just copy-pasted parts of a European court order sans examining associated evidence in India.
Meanwhile, in a separate case, the CCI also imposed a penalty of Rs 936.44 crore on Google for abusing its dominant position concerning its Play Store policies.
The Alliance of Digital India Foundation (ADIF) had expressed deep concern over Google's announcement to implement its new Google Play payments policy. The ADIF has demanded that the new policies must be put on hold since Google charging up to 30% service fee on application developers will be a significant setback to the Indian startup ecosystem.