Delhi High Court defers hearing in Google’s in-app billing policy case

The Delhi High Court on Wednesday adjourned the hearing in Google’s petition against a single judge’s order directing the Competition Commission of India (CCI) to handle applications filed by the Alliance for Digital India Foundation (ADIF) against the tech giant’s billing policy.

The case is likely to go to hearing on November 1.

Earlier this week, Disney took the Madras High Court to challenge Google’s in-app billing system. The company, which operates the Disney + Hotstar streaming app in India, told the court that Google was threatening to remove the streaming app if it did not comply with the new payments system. The court asked Google not to remove the app from the store and directed it to receive a 4% service fee from Disney.

In April, the Delhi High Court had asked CCI to rule on the petition filed by the Alliance for Digital India Foundation (ADIF) against Google’s billing policy on or before April 26.

ADIF, which represents a consortium of digital start-ups, has petitioned to suspend Google’s new in-app billing fee system, called User Choice Billing (UCB), until CCI investigates the tech giant over alleged non-compliance with its directives. ADIF alleged that despite the regulator’s directive requiring the tech giant to allow the use of third-party billing services for in-app payments, the UCB system charged high service fees.

Google had plans to implement UCB as of April 26th.

CCI, in October last year, fined Google Rs 936 crore and required it to allow and not restrict app developers from using any third party billing services and not impose any discriminatory clause.

The start-up group said their complaint was that the antitrust regulator had failed to act on its appeal on the new policy because of a lack of a quorum to hear the case.

CCI is now hearing petitions from startups.