Amid CCI Probe, Google Says Committed To Indian News Publishers’ Needs

The Indian market, which has one of the largest bases of digital consumers, has emerged as an important market for tech giant Google’s news segment. Just a day after Competition Commission of India (CCI) recently ordered probe into the tech giant over alleged abuse of dominance in the news aggregation space, Google executive said that the Internet giant is committed to responding to the needs of Indian publishers.

Speaking to The Indian Express, Kate Beddoe, director of Google’s News Partnerships in APAC, said that Google works best with the news industry when the partnership is based on common goals. 

“We have talked about quality content, we have talked about digital sustainability, we haven’t touched on nature of changing user behaviours and how do we make sure the content is reaching people regardless of format. I think that’s one of the areas we really need to focus on,” she said.

Beddoe said that India was the first country where Google looked to learn from its experiences with news publishers to become a better partner. While Google launched News Showcase in India in 2021 with 30 news publishers, it now has 90 publishers for the programme in the country. 

Google News Showcase lets publishers uniquely package their stories which are then displayed by the search engine’s news products.

Although many of the Indian publishers are the right kind of candidates for the Showcase programme, others have very different needs, Beddoe said. 

“We are committed to responding to the needs of Indian publishers in India in a way that works. I think when you have government involved, it becomes more challenging to recognise and respond to those nuances,” she added.

In January this year, the Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA) approached the CCI over Google’s monopolistic position in the search market as well as in advertising intermediation.

Later in March, the Indian Newspapers Society (INS) also filed a similar plea before the CCI in March. The INS’ complaint was then clubbed together with the previous plea filed by the DNPA. 

The latest CCI order for another probe is based on a complaint filed by New Delhi-based News Broadcasters and Digital Association (NBDA). The competition watchdog has directed to club the complaint with the two other probes.