Google Fined Rs.1337cr.; Amazon Faces Lawsuit in the UK
The big tech companies around the world are facing antitrust lawsuits for pushing their own products and services through the backdoor
The era of big data analytics, heralded by the tech world as a boon to customers, has created massive hegemonies in the online space leading to antitrust bodies working overtime. The Competition Commission of India (CCI) today penalized Google with a fine of Rs.1,337.76 crore for abusing its position in the Android mobile OS market, barely a week after Amazon faced a billion dollar lawsuit in the UK for favoring its own sellers.
However, the irony of it all is that Amazon in India is fighting a battle from the other side, having approached the Supreme Court seeking recourse from an order by the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) order on the US company’s aborted deal with the Future Group. In this case, Amazon was claiming that Reliance’s acquisition of Future would create a monopoly.
CCI finds fault with Google’s Android monopoly
Coming back to the CCI order, the antitrust body prescribed around a dozen key measures to be taken by Google for abusing its dominant position across multiple markets in the Android operating system business. The regulator wanted handset makers not to pre-install Google services and asked the big tech company to give fair access to all stakeholders.
“Google shall not deny access to its Play Services APIs to disadvantage OEMs (mobile manufacturers), app developers and its existing or potential competitors,” CCI said in its order and added that this would ensure interoperability of apps between Android OS which complies with compatibility requirements of Google and Android forks. By virtue of this remedy, the app developers would be able to port their apps easily onto Android forks, it added.
The antitrust body said dominant players such as Google should ensure that their conduct did not affect competition on merit but said the company had used its dominant position on the digital search business which denied market access to competing apps. Google did the same on the Android app store to protect its online general search, which violates competition law.
UK legal firms takes on Amazon
Meanwhile, Amazon is facing a billion-dollar lawsuit in Britain over allegations that it abused its dominant position by favoring its own products. The company faced flak for similar issues in India with some trader associations alleging that Amazon was favoring its own sellers over others on the platform.
In the UK, consumer rights advocate Julie Hunter has said that they plan to bring collective action on behalf of consumers who have made purchases on the Amazon platform since October 2016. However, Amazon denied any wrongdoing and claimed the case had no merit. The petitioners claim that Amazon was using a secretive and self-favoring algorithm to promote its own products through the Buy Box feature on its website.
Big tech companies have been facing regulator ire for some time now with the CCI itself ordering a problem around complaints from Android phone users. The case stems from the agreements that Google signs with phone makers for using their proprietary Android platform, which forces them to exclude services offered by rivals.
