Google Android Case: CCI is protecting Amazon’s interest in Android case, accuses Google
Google said, in its latest appeal to the Supreme Court, that the Competition Commission of India (CCI) is protecting Amazon’s interests after it complained that India’s Anti-Competition Commission (CCI) had reversed part of the European Commission’s ruling against it for allegedly abusing Android’s market dominance.
The latest development in the Google-CCI case comes when Google filed an appeal in the Supreme Court on June 26, against the National Corporate Law Appeals Court (NCLAT) order on March 29. The tech giant claims that NCLAT failed to implement the “impact analysis” portion of the CCI order.
in which appeal business standard Google said: “The Court has correctly determined that an effects analysis is required to establish a breach of Section 4 (Abuse of Dominance) of the Competition Act, but has not properly applied this test to the Commission’s order. Had the arbitral tribunal applied the effects test, it would have found that Google’s agreements did not not be capable of causing any anticompetitive effects.”
CCI found that Google had abused its dominant position in violation of the 2002 Competition Act.
Google has been penalized and required to pay Rs 1,337.76 crore for practices related to Android devices. It also ordered the tech giant to cease and desist from numerous “unfair business practices” and allow modified versions of the Android operating system, called an Android fork.
In its most recent appeal to the Supreme Court, Google claimed that the court ignored relevant evidence and relied on what was irrelevant and unreliable. The only competitor that has emerged is Amazon.
“The only competitor who came to mourn the ‘split’ was Amazon – a tech giant – who instead of investing in creating a competing ecosystem (like Apple, Windows and Android) wanted to cannibalize Android,” Google said. in its attractiveness.
During the investigation, CCI contacted industry players and asked if Google was using its dominance. Amazon was among them.
Amazon told CCI that Google’s dominance has stunted the growth of FireOS, which was a fork of Android. “Globally, FireOS failed commercially due to poor user experience. In India, Fire Phone was not even launched. Thus, the Commission called Amazon’s failure to compete in India a failure and attributed it to Google’s agreements.”
Attempting to get Google’s response regarding this issue elicited no response. Amazon declined to comment on the matter.
However, legal experts said CCI did not rely solely on third-party reports.
“Third-party submissions are one of many pieces of evidence that CCI has considered. One of the most common practices by competition authorities around the world in “abuse of dominance” cases is to seek feedback from competitors of the dominant entity in order to obtain a comprehensive view of the case In any event, inquiries under competition law are in-kind (as opposed to in-person) and the CCI-directed changes are intended to protect the “competitive process” and not the “competitor,” said GR Bhatia, partner, Luthra and Luthra law firms in India.
Google claimed that the court did not take feedback from original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) such as Samsung, Sony, and Oppo. It relied on players like Lava and Xiaomi, who said they had no attempt to develop an Android fork.
In its March 2023 order, NCLAT, while upholding the penalty against Google, upheld the submission of Amazon and eight other manufacturers that were related and properly considered by CCI. Accordingly, in the appeal against NCLAT’s pending order to the Supreme Court, it will include One of the controversial issues is definitely adjudicating the validity and appropriateness of the claims of Amazon and other OEMs,” said Hemant Kothari, Director, HK Law Chambers, Jaipur.
The tech giant claims that more than 30,000 Indian app developers distribute their apps through the Playstore with more than 150,000 apps currently available. Almost half of the top 200 apps installed in India in 2019 were developed by Indian companies.