NCLAT Set To Hear Google Plea Against CCI Order

The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) on Wednesday (December 4) will hear Google’s appeal against the Competition Commission of India’s (CCI’s) order that accused the tech major of abusing its dominance in the Android ecosystem. 

The tech major is expected to further urge the NCLAT to quash the CCI order that entails a penalty of INR 1,337.76 Cr and changes to its operations in the country.

Legal documents filed by Google reportedly allege that the investigators of the competition watchdog copied several parts of a similar European ruling in the order against the tech giant. 

The documents accuse the CCI for deploying evidence from Europe that was not examined in India. The filings also made note of more than 50 instances of plagiarism.

“The Commission failed to conduct an impartial, balanced, and legally sound investigation… Google’s mobile app distribution practices are pro-competitive and not unfair/exclusionary,” read the documents, according to Reuters. 

The US-based tech major’s appeal also includes testimonials from other startups over concerns surrounding the CCI order. 

According to a report published by Economic Times, when Google sought an early listing for its appeal before NCLAT on December 3, PhonePe-backed OSLabs and MapmyIndia expressed their intention to become as a party to the case, citing being aggrieved by Google’s anti-competitive practices. As a result, the NCLAT is also expected to hear their side of the story on Wednesday.

It is pertinent to note here that OSLabs operates a content discovery platform, while MapmyIndia operates a geotech platform. Both companies compete directly with Google’s different verticals in the country. 

Google Under The CCI Lens

The tech giant had a tumultuous 2022 in India. Last year, CCI slapped two penalties on Google for abusing its market dominance. While the first order fined Google INR 1,338 Cr, the second ruling penalised the tech giant for INR 936 Cr. 

The aftermath saw the search giant move NCLAT last week to get the CCI order quashed. Following this, the competition watchdog also issued demand notices to Google. 

While penalties are an issue, the bigger challenge is the ‘sweeping mandates’ issued by the CCI that could be a threat to Google’s operations in India. 

Interestingly, this is not the first time that Google is under the regulatory scanner for its alleged abuse of market dominance. It is also being probed for employing anti-competitive practices in the news aggregation space and the digital payments market.