Google faces new antitrust plaint over smart TVs

Digbijay.Mishra@timesgroup.com

Bengaluru: Google is facing another

antitrust

challenge. A fresh complaint has been filed with the

Competition Commission of India

(

CCI

), accusing the US-based tech major of abusing its Android

operating system

’s influence in the

smart television

market, which has been growing at a fast pace.

A person aware of the matter confirmed that the competition watchdog has admitted the complaint, which was filed by two antitrust lawyers, and Google has been asked to respond. “The complaint is about Google’s antitrust practices where, for example, if you are a TV maker and you want to use Google’s operating system on your TV, before giving the licence to you, they sign an agreement with you which essentially restricts you from getting into an agreement with any forked or modified

Android

developer, irrespective of the device being manufactured,” a person aware of the matter said.

Kshitiz Arya

and

Purushottam Anand

have filed the complaint against Google. Both of them declined to comment on the matter, while Google India and CCI did not respond to an emailed query from TOI. The development came on Wednesday when a US Congress report on Big Tech said Google’s Play Store functions as a gatekeeper which the search engine giant is using to hike fees and favour its applications. The report also stated that Google tracks the real-time performance of third parties, including its competitors. The US subcommittee report investigating competition in digital markets said Google has used Android to entrench and extend its dominance in a host of ways that undermine competition.

Google is already facing heat from a group of local entrepreneurs who have been protesting against its move to implement 30% fees on digital transactions in India, which after the backlash has been pushed by six months to April 2022. In the US, Apple is also facing a similar pushback from platforms like Epic Games and Spotify. But in India, the focus remains on Google Play Store as Apple has a very small market share.

The report noted that according to documents obtained by the subcommittee, from 2011 to 2015, revenue from the Play Store accounted for 85% of Google’s total revenue from the Android operating system, hardware sales, and the Play Store.

“This includes using contractual restrictions and exclusivity provisions to extend Google’s search monopoly from desktop to mobile and to favour its own applications, and devising Android Lockbox, a covert effort to track real-time data on the usage and engagement of third-party apps, some of which were Google’s competitors,” it said.

It added, “Overall, Android’s business practices reveal how Google has maintained its search dominance through relying on various contractual restrictions that blocked competition and through exploiting information asymmetries, rather than by competing on the merits.”