LI Network
Published on: December 08, 2023 at 11:40 IST
The Delhi High Court granted permission to tech giant Google to withdraw its appeal against a single-judge order instructing the Competition Commission of India (CCI) to consider applications filed by the Alliance of Digital India Foundation (ADIF) challenging Google’s new in-app user choice billing policy.
Senior advocate Sajan Poovayya, representing Google, informed the High Court that the CCI now has the required quorum and has initiated hearings on the pleas submitted by ADIF.
Poovayya requested the High Court not to close the legal questions raised in the appeal. The withdrawal faced no objections from the counsel representing the CCI.
Previously, a division bench led by Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Subramonium Prasad had issued a notice on Google’s appeal in April of this year. Earlier, a single-judge bench, Justice Tushar Rao Gedela, had directed the CCI to make a decision on the application filed by ADIF by April 26.
The petition filed by ADIF, comprising startups such as Matrimony.com, TrulyMadly, Paytm, Shaadi.com, and others, argued that despite users employing third-party payment processors, Google would charge a “service fee” at a reduced rate of 4 percent from developers for transactions occurring via non-GPBS (Google Play Billing System) under the guise of the new pricing policy.
The petitioner asserted that app developers, even if not using GPBS, would still have to pay nearly the same commissions (11-26 percent) to Google.
In an order from October last year, the CCI directed Google not to impose any conditions on app developers that are unfair, unreasonable, or discriminatory to the services provided to them. Additionally, a penalty of Rs 936.44 crore was imposed on Google in a separate case for abusing its dominant position concerning its Play Store policies, alongside a cease-and-desist order.