CCI clubs newspaper body's complaints against Google with earlier order

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has clubbed the information presented by Indian Newspaper Society – on Google’s alleged abuse of its dominant position – with an earlier order to investigate the technology giant’s practices in the online news publishing business.

After examining the contentions of INS, the representative organisation of newspapers in the country, the CCI found that prima facie allegations of abuse of dominant position are under the purview of the Competition Act, 2002 and that it requires a detailed investigation by the Director General.

Accordingly, the antitrust watchdog has passed an order to club the information submitted by the INS with the submissions made by the Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA) who filed their complaint before the commission on similar contentions last year.

In January this year, the CCI ordered a probe against Google for its alleged abuse of dominant position. "In a well-functioning democracy, the critical role played by news media cannot be undermined, and it needs to be ensured that digital gatekeeper firms do not abuse their dominant position to harm the competitive process of determining a fair distribution of revenue amongst all stakeholders," it said in the order.

The European Publishers Council had also filed a competition complaint against Google alleging that Google has achieved end to end control of the ad tech value chain, thus abusing its dominant position.

According to INS, news media houses are completely kept in the dark on the total advertising revenue collected by Google and what actual percentage of the advertising revenue is being transferred to media organisations.

In its appeal, the news paper body has stated that Alphabet Inc (parent company of Google), Google LLC, Google India Private Limited, Google Ireland Limited, and Google Asia Pacific Pte Ltd are allegedly abusing their dominant position related to News Referral Services and Google Ad Tech Services in the Indian online news media market, which is in violation of Section 4 of the Competition Act, 2002.

The INS has highlighted the fact that the producer/publisher of news which are made available in digital format, are not being paid a fair value for their content, despite them having invested heavily in creating appropriate content for the customers, who search for news items using the Google platform. Several countries including Australia, France and Spain have passed legislation requiring tech companies, including Google to adequately compensate content producers for using their content on search results.