Google on Wednesday scored a partial victory in its antitrust case against the Competition Commission of India (CCI) after the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) quashed four out of 10 directives set by the commission in the Android antitrust case.
NCLAT, in its hearing today, said that CCI’s findings of Google’s anti-competitive conduct in case of its Android mobile operating system were correct and the company will have to pay the fine set by the organisation. At the same time, the appellate court quashed four of the 10 antitrust directives that had been imposed on Google to change its business model.
Among the reliefs, Google will now not need to allow hosting of third-party app stores inside Play Store. In addition to that, Google will not need to allow users to remove pre-installed apps such as Google Maps, Gmail and YouTube. Furthermore, a report by Reuters says that the company can also continue imposing curbs on so-called “sideloading”, a practice of downloading apps without using an app store, which CCI had said must be discontinued.
The move will come a relief for the company after Supreme Court, back in January 2023, refused to suspend any of the antitrust directives ordered by CCI last year. Following the Supreme Court order, Google made sweeping changes to Android in India, including allowing device makers to license individual apps for pre-installation and giving users the option to choose their default search engine – changes NCLAT did not interfere with, the agency reported.
“Implementation of these changes across the ecosystem will be a complex process and will require significant work at our end and, in many cases, significant efforts from partners, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and developers,” Google had said in a blog post at the time.
The appellate court also said that Google will have to pay the fine of Rs 1,337.76 crore, imposed on it by CCI. A two-member bench of the NCLAT directed the tech giant to follow the CCI’s order and deposit the amount in 30 days.
At the moment, it remains unclear if Google will again challenge the decision made by the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal to revoke the other CCI directives.
— With agency inputs.