2274 crore fine on Google, will Modi government be able to recover
The Competition Commission of India (CCI), an organization formed to ensure healthy business competition or healthy competition in India, has fined Google.
The fine was also imposed not once, but twice in a week. In total, a fine of Rs 2274 crore has been imposed on Google.
On October 20, CCI imposed a fine of Rs 1337.76 crore on Google.
The allegation was a misappropriation of its dominance in the Android mobile devices business.
And then on October 25, the same commission imposed a new fine of Rs 936.44 crore on him.
This time the reason was Google’s policy related to taking payments on Google Play Store.
The CCI was investigating these two cases separately from 2019 and 2020.
This fine of Rs 2274 crore or about $ 280 million will be a cumin in the camel’s mouth if you see that Google’s annual earnings last year has been $257 billion, or about Rs 21 lakh crore.
But even then this fine can become a problem for Google.
Why exactly?
Before trying to understand this, it is important to understand what exactly is Google.
Need an answer to any question, or to search anything by typing any name, to find someone’s birth certificate or to search history.
In today’s date, the most reliable way for all these works is Google.
But Google is no longer just a search engine, an Internet browser, a mail service or any such service.
Google is like a millennium right now, which has surrounded our life from all sides and even the governments around the world are now finding themselves in trouble in the competition with Google.
Google is not the only such company. There are also companies such as Meta, the company that runs Facebook, Amazon and Netflix, which are called Big Tech.
Big tech companies at risk of being unbridled
That is, giant technology companies. Their size, their resources and the technology in their hands, the danger of it becoming unbridled, now the governments of almost the whole world have started to understand very well.
That is why, from time to time, efforts to curb them seem to be making headlines.
Such decisions may have come for the first time in India, but users of Android phones or any device running on Android know that the operating system that runs on any company or brand of device you buy is from Google itself.
Along with its operating system, Google also installs many of its apps on the phone.
OS will always be Google’s
The CCI found in its investigation that with the adoption of Google’s operating system, the mobile maker is banned from using Google’s App Store, ie Play Store, Google Maps and web services like Gmail, its browser Chrome and the same web video. Also install the hosting platform YouTube on the phone simultaneously.
Not only this, it also has to be arranged that the phone buyer cannot even turn on the phone without giving his location and other important information to these services.
And he does not have the option to uninstall these apps and services even later.
Smartphones are used by about 60 million people in India, of which about 95 percent are Android phones.
Google accused of taking undue advantage This may seem trivial but the CCI found that here Google is taking advantage of its hold on the market.
Additionally, this behavior has made it difficult for others who build and run such apps and services to do business.
The CCI has not only fined Google but also directed it to ensure that the roadblocks to other app developers are removed immediately and the way should also be opened for the phone buyers to opt for Google’s apps and services. to remove it from your phone.
The second case is related to people who have created an app to be used on Android and they want to deliver it to customers through Google Play Store.
Here again Google put a new condition.
It has said that any such app will be required to use only Google Play billing service to collect money from customers.
This is Google’s own payment service and of course there is a fee or commission to be paid for its use.
This condition was made necessary not only for the initial payment of the app, but also for any payment made during its use i.e. in-app payment.
The CCI also held Google guilty of taking advantage of its position in this case and asked it to allow further use of third party payment services along with fines.
After this, in a statement issued by Google, it has been said that the technology, security and safety of customers have been provided through Google and Android and all the options and easy avenues are open, Indian developers have benefited greatly.
Contributed to India’s digital revolution: Google
Not only this, he says that by keeping the prices low, he has contributed to India’s digital revolution and has passed its benefits to millions of Indian consumers.
But at the same time it is also being said from Google that they will study these orders and decide the way forward.
But on the other hand, the demand is also gaining momentum that the formula used to impose fines should be reconsidered and such a formula should be used so that the fine also seems like a punishment to these big companies.
demanding more fines
At present, relative turnover is used for this work, that is, only a part of the earnings from their Indian business is charged as penalty.
For this reason, the fine imposed in India is very less in comparison to its global income.
But the law fraternity says that India has now become the world’s largest market for such companies and the earnings from it are much higher.
That is why their demand is that to impose fines on these companies, their entire world’s earnings should be measured and not just India’s.
Only then will the fear of law arise in them.
This is the criterion used by the European Union to determine the amount of fines.
If this matter progresses, then not only for Google, but for many big tech companies, problems can increase.
But if they improve their business practices just because of this fear, then it will be great news for consumers in India and the rest of the world as well.
