Google Fined Rs 1,337 Crore In India For Anti-Competitive Practices

New Delhi:

The country’s competition regulator has fined Alphabet Inc’s Google Rs 1,337 crore for anti-competitive practices related to Android mobile devices.

The Competition Commission of India, or CCI, tweeted it fined Google for “abusing dominant position in multiple markets in the Android mobile device ecosystem.”

Google operates and manages the Android OS (operating system) and licences its other proprietary applications. The OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) use this OS and Google’s apps in their mobile devices.

Accordingly, they enter into multiple agreements to govern their rights and obligations, such as Mobile Application Distribution Agreement (MADA).

“MADA assured that the most prominent search entry points i.e., search app, widget and Chrome browser are pre-installed on Android devices, which accorded significant competitive edge to Google’s search services over its competitors,” the CCI said in a statement today.

“Further, Google also secured significant competitive edge over its competitors, in relation to its another revenue-earning app i.e. YouTube in Android devices. The competitors of these services could never avail the same level of market access which Google secured and embedded for itself through MADA…create significant entry barriers for competitors of Google to enter or operate in the markets concerned,” the CCI said.