New Delhi:
Fair trade regulator CCI ordered an investigation Friday against Google for alleged abuse of a dominant position.
“In a functioning democracy, the critical role of news media must not be undermined, and care must be taken that digital gatekeepers do not abuse their dominant position to harm the competitive process of determining a fair distribution of revenue among all stakeholders,” it said. CCI.
It added that the Commission considers prima facie that Google has infringed the provisions of Section 4 of the Competition Act 2002 relating to abuse of a dominant position.
The injunction came in response to a complaint filed by the Digital News Publishers Association, a private company that promotes and promotes the interests of digital news publishers.
It had filed a complaint against Alphabet Inc, Google LLC, Google India Private Ltd and Google Ireland Ltd. The association said that most of the traffic on news websites comes from online search engines and that Google is the most dominant search engine.
It said that more than 50 percent of the total traffic on the news websites is routed through Google and that Google, the dominant player, determines through its algorithms which news website is discovered through search.
In addition, Google is the main stakeholder in the digital advertising space and unilaterally determines the amount to be paid to the publishers for the content created by them, as well as the terms on which the aforementioned amounts are to be paid.
It went on to say that the association’s members suffer a loss of advertising revenue and an inability to get a fair share of the news distribution value chain, despite working and generating credible news.
It said there is a lack of transparency in online digital advertising brokerage services, which makes it difficult for publishers to monitor and verify the advertising revenue generated on their websites.
“Undoubtedly, as a gateway, Google generates significant traffic for news publishers, but at the same time, the imbalanced bargaining power and denial of a fair share of advertising revenue, as alleged by the informant, deserve a detailed investigation,” the commission said. said.
According to the regulator, it must be investigated whether Google imposes discriminatory conditions or prices on different news publishers.
Google has unilaterally decided not to pay news publishers for the snippets they use in search engine results.
It should be examined whether Google’s use of news fragments is a result of an imbalance in bargaining power between Google on the one hand and news publishers on the other, and whether this affects the referral traffic to news publishers’ websites, and thus their revenue capacities.
In France and Australia, Google has been asked to negotiate in good faith with news publishers for paid content licenses to address the imbalance in bargaining power between the two and the resulting imposition of unfair terms by Google, CCI noted.
The regulator has instructed its investigative department, the Director General (DG), to launch an investigation into the matter and submit the investigative report within 60 days.
It added that “nothing stated in this injunction will constitute a final opinion on the merits of the case, and the DG will conduct the investigation without being influenced in any way by the comments made herein”.