Why did Indian authorities penalized Google for Rs 136 Crores?

Every country, including India, has competition laws that are there to prevent the emergence of monopoly in the market. This law is overlooked by a group of authorities.

What happened was back in 2012, Bharat Matrimony, along with consumer unity and trust society, filed a complaint against Google to competition regulator. They say the search giant was abusing its power by favoring its own services and manually manipulating its searches for its own financial benefits.

There were few other charges that, on the course of the investigation, Facebook, Flipkart, and other companies agreed to. While the authorities didn’t find Google guilty of all charges, they did agree that this giant tech company abuses its dominant position to benefit itself by restricting the market for other publishers, advertises and other participants. So they slapped the company with the penalty of Rs 136 crore, which isn’t much really. It’s just the 5 percent of revenue Google makes every year in India.

It’s really not a big surprise that Google manipulates the e-market with its authoritative policies. It has been battling such charges and lawsuits around the world for years. Only last year EU imposed a fine of $2.7 billion on Google for similar reasons.

In a 190-page order, theCompetition Commission of India(CCI) said Google abused its dominant position on three counts that largely relate to search, while no foul play was seen in case ofadvertising. CCI imposed a penalty amounting to 5% of the average revenue generated from India over the three years to FY15, an amount of ?135.85 crore, which has to be deposited within 60 days. A maximum penalty of 10% can be imposed under the Act.

“Google was found to be indulging in practices of search bias and by doing so, it causes harm to its competitors as well as to users,” the order said. “Google was leveraging its dominance in the market for online general web search, to strengthen its position in the market for online syndicate search services,” the CCI said. The ruling follows complaints filed by Matrimony.com and Consumer Unity & Trust Society (CUTS) in 2012 against Google LLC, Google India Pvt Ltd and Google Ireland Ltd.