CCI orders its DG to investigate Google

New Delhi: The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has ordered an investigation by its Director-General into complaints against Google that the tech giant has allegedly abused its dominant position qua the news publishers.

In its information, INS (Indian Newspaper Society) has stated that Alphabet Inc. (parent company), Google LLC, Google India Private Limited, Google Ireland Limited, and Google Asia Pacific Pte Ltd are allegedly abusing their dominant position related to News Referral Services and Google Ad Tech Services in the Indian online news media market, which violates Section 4 of the Competition Act, 2002. The INS has highlighted the fact that the producer/publisher of news which is made available in digital format, are not being paid a fair value for their content, despite them having invested heavily in creating appropriate content for the customers, who search for news items using the Google platform. Several countries including Australia, France and Spain have passed legislation requiring tech companies, including Google to adequately compensate content producers for using their content on search results.

The News Media Houses are completely kept in the dark on the total advertising revenue collected by Google and what actual percentage of the advertising revenue is being transferred to media organizations. The European Publishers Council had also filed a competition complaint against Google alleging that Google has achieved an end to end control of the ad tech value chain, thus abusing its dominant position.

The CCI after examining the contentions of INS, the representative organization of newspapers in the country, found that prima facie these allegations of abuse of dominant position are under the purview of the Competition Act, 2002 and that it requires a detailed investigation by the Director-General. CCI accordingly passed an order to club the information submitted by the INS with the submissions made by the Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA) who have also filed information before the CCI on similar contentions.

The Indian Newspaper Society has been working towards obtaining proper compensation for content generation for its Members and other news publishers for fair payment and transparency from Google. The INS looks forward to the implementation of a just payment system at the earliest, said INS Secretary-General Mary Paul in a statement issued to the media today.

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