India Fines Google $113 Million, Orders To Permit Third-Party Payment Systems in Play Store

India's antitrust watchdog has hit Google with $113 million fine for abusing the dominant position of its Google Play Store and ordered the firm to allow app developers to use third-party payments processing service for in-app purchases or for purchasing apps, the second such penalty on the Android-maker in just as many weeks in its largest market by users. From a report: The Competition Commission of India, which opened the probe into Google in late 2020, said mandating developers to use Google's own billing system for paid apps and in-app purchases through Play Store "constitutes an imposition of unfair condition" and thus violates provisions of the nation's competition act. The regulator -- which interviewed several industry players including Paytm, Zomato, Info Edge, Samsung, Vivo, Xiaomi, Microsoft and Realme as part of the investigation -- said that Google not using its billing system for its own apps such as YouTube amounts to "imposition of discriminatory conditions."

Why just Google?

[The Faywood Assassin]

All these multi-payment articles only mention targeting Google.

Why is Apple getting away with it?

Re:Why just Google?

[luvirini]

In India Google has a dominating market position, with the "feature phones" taking rest and Apple is basically a rounding error.

Re:

[fazig]

The justice system usually doesn't work that fast in most countries that aren't outright dictatorships.

https://www.reuters.com/world/... [reuters.com]
https://www.jurist.org/news/20... [jurist.org] (non registration walled)

Re:

[AleRunner]

The justice system usually doesn't work that fast in most countries that aren't outright dictatorships.

https://www.jurist.org/news/20... [jurist.org] (non registration walled)

"justice delayed is justice denied" - delay is one of the ways that the rich make sure that it's only the rich that get real justice.

India's problem with it's justice system has always traditionally been that it's too slow. Great to see quick action. Seems reasonable to me even if the fine is a little small compared to the amounts Google makes from this kind of thing but if this is the first time with this issue that's okay too.

Interesting to see nobody jumping up and down "how dare those Indian's regulate

Re:

[fermion]

In most of the world google is the monopoly. It is leveraging it market dominance to squeeze competitors in a way only MS did before. With Apple everyone makes money, though obviously we all wish we could make a little more. With google, the market is larger but quite a bit poorer.

Re:

[jwymanm]

It's their store though. Nobody has to actually use it unlike Apple who forces it. They can load their own app store on android phones if they like. It doesn't make sense. Someone could easily make a better Play app.

Re:

[junglee_iitk]

Everyone was free to install netscape navigator too. Windows just came with internet explorer with no way to uninstall it.

Re:

[pacinpm]

Free market inevitably leads to monopoly. Most countries have some rules to avoid this scenario. Those rules goes against completely free market but ensure there is a competition between companies. Even if temporarily it means limiting or even forcibly splitting companies.

Re:

[Zak3056]

In most of the world google is the monopoly. It is leveraging it market dominance to squeeze competitors in a way only MS did before. With Apple everyone makes money, though obviously we all wish we could make a little more. With google, the market is larger but quite a bit poorer.

The fundamental difference between Google and Apple here is that Google lets you use whatever the hell store you want to use, or just plain load whatever software you want on the device, whereas Apple is a vertically integrated platform that just plain locks you into their ecosystem.

I have difficulty wrapping my head around the argument that Google is somehow worse here (I mean, both companies have shitty business practices and are not remotely consumer friendly, but "sure, use us or not" is the antithesis

Re:

[The1stImmortal]

In this particular case, it seems the decision turned on Google requiring the Play Store payment system for third party apps but not for its own apps like YouTube (in Youtube's case through things like premium, superchats, subscriptions etc).

I'm not sure if that's true for Apple - I'm not primarily an Apple user but as I understand Apple uses a unified payment system for pretty much everything, first or third party.

India Said Stop

[Your Anus]

Or I shall be forced to say Stop again!

Time to end the racket

[CodeInspired]

While it's reasonable to expect a fee to get your app listed and distributed in the stores, it's utterly ridiculous to be taxed 30% for both the app purchase and any additional in-app purchases. Typical merchant + online processing fees range about 3-5%. There's no good reason Google/Apple should be mandating payments be made through them at a fee of 30%. Other than greed of course.

Re:

[tippen]

There's no good reason Google/Apple should be mandating payments be made through them at a fee of 30%. Other than greed of course.

Not that I'm defending the 30% figure they both charge, but the reason is that if they didn't charge for in-app purchases, virtually every app would be "free" and the companies would all just do in-app purchases.

corporations bow to money

[sdinfoserv]

India is the second most populated country on the planet with 1.4B people. It's a huge market and huge revenue potential. It's the reason corporate whores kowtow to the China's draconian spy and censorship rules because they want market access.

How come they didn't go after Apple?

[Xpendable]

Fascinating that there is no mention of Apple, which does exactly the same thing. I wonder why? Oh, could it be because some of the iPhone models just started being manufactured in India? Wouldn't want to upset Apple, now would we?

Only a matter of time

[bustinbrains]

...until the U.S. government looks at what other nations are getting away with and will also start to "order" large multi-billion dollar companies like Google to cough up whatever money they have in order to continue conducting business in the U.S. All the taxes that they are currently evading won't be as attractive anymore. There are few things that are certain and guaranteed: Taxes and death. It usually takes a bit longer than desired for tax evaders to get caught.

Who cares about 113m fine ?

[gitano_dbs]

Why its news ? not even google cares about 113 millions fine.

Tell us when fines start at 1 billion, this its a non news, not even for Google.