Inspired by ongoing investigations against Google in Europe and the US for anti-competitive practices, consumer rights organisation CUTS has called for a similar investigation into the functioning of the leading search engine in India too.
In a preliminary information report submitted to the country’s competition watchdog Competition Commission of India, CUTS sought investigation into the potential anti-competitive conduct of Google in the Indian internet space, e-commerce, online advertising and related markets.
“Worldwide, Google has been widely criticised by online travel sites (like Expedia, Kayak) and local business review sites. They claim that Google promotes links to its own services such as local business information depriving their sites of potential traffic,” CUTS alleged.
Google is currently under investigation in several jurisdictions around the world, including the USA (by the Federal Trade Commission), the EU (by the European Commission) and the Attorney General of the State of Texas, all of which have inspired the present CUTS petition, the organisation stated.
The complaint against Google in the EU was brought by service search providers alleging unfavourable treatment of their services in Google’s unpaid and sponsored search results along with preferential placement of Google’s own services. Whether Google lowered the page placement of unpaid results of services with which it competes (such as price comparison or specialised search) and placed its own services higher to shut out competition, is under investigation.
Google is the largest search engine in the world as also in India. Most users of the internet in India, now numbering about 100 million, are regular users of Google. The Indian internet market, search and advertising, is potentially the largest market in the world.
The online search and advertising industry in India is growing at a very high rate. Last year all of the e-commerce market in India was about $5 billion. It is estimated that this will grow to $40 billion by 2015. Non travel e-commerce alone is expected to grow to a $30 billion industry in 4-5 years.
CUTS had recently filed a similar complaint against the world’s largest online social network Facebook.
