The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has ordered an investigation by its Director General into complaints against tech giant Google for alleged abuse of its dominant position in the online news media market.
This direction came on February 22 in response to complaint/information filed by the Indian Newspaper Society (INS), the representative organization of newspapers in the country, in early February, sources said.
INS had alleged abuse of dominance by Google as regards News Referral Services and Google Ad Tech Services in the Indian online news media market.
After examining the contentions of INS, the competition watchdog found that prima facie the allegations of abuse of dominant position are under the purview of the Competition Act, 2002 and that it required detailed investigation by the Director General.
CCI had, therefore, passed an order to club the information submitted by the INS with the submissions made by the Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA) who have also filed information before the CCI on similar contentions. This would mean the CCI investigation against Google is going to turn into a large one spanning every publication and also few television channels in the country , sources added.
Demanding ‘fair share’
Put simply, among the several points raised by INS in its complaint is the demand for a “fair share” of digital advertising revenues for the content providers ( Indian news publishers), sources said.
While the news content is that of the publishers, Google gets to seemingly keep disproportionately large share of the advertising revenue as the tech giant continues to control the whole ecosystem including both the buying and selling side of the ad network, INS is learnt to have submitted.
As a result, the Indian publishers are understood to have complained to CCI that they are in the dark as to what is going on in an apparently closed system and how their share is being determined.
Indian news publishers are crying foul that they are faced with a “one sided contract” given Google’s dominance in search business and that the contract is not “mutually beneficial”.
The news media houses are completely kept in the dark on the total advertising revenue collected by Google and what actual percentage of the advertising revenue is being transferred to media organisations, INS said in a statement on Friday.
In its information to CCI, INS has stated that Alphabet Inc. (parent company), Google LLC, Google India Private Limited, Google Ireland Limited, and Google Asia Pacific Pte Ltd are allegedly abusing their dominant position related to News Referral Services and Google Ad Tech Services in the Indian online news media market, which is in violation of Section 4 of the Competition Act, 2002.
The INS has highlighted the fact that the producer/publisher of news which are made available in digital format, are not being paid a fair value for their content, despite them having invested heavily in creating appropriate content for the customers, who search for news items using the Google platform.
Several countries including Australia, France and Spain have passed legislation requiring tech companies, including Google to adequately compensate content producers for using their content on search results.
The European Publishers Council had also filed a competition complaint against Google alleging that Google has achieved end to end control of the ad tech value chain, thus abusing its dominant position.
The Indian Newspaper Society has been working towards obtaining proper compensation for content generation for its Members and other news publishers for fair payment and transparency from Google.
The INS looks forward to the implementation of a just payment system at the earliest, the statement added.
Published on
March 25, 2022
