CCI combines complaints against Google
NBDA has alleged that Google has been free-riding on their content without giving them adequate compensation
Google has been accused of dictating terms and conditions that favoured itself, which is not fair to content writers associated with news organizations. The Competition Commission of India said it considered information and documents filed in a meeting held last week. The case will be combined with two other ongoing lawsuits brought against the leading search engine owned by Alphabet Inc.
The News Broadcasters and Digital Associations (NBDA) has levelled complaints against Google’s parent entities Alphabet Inc, Google LLC, Google India Pvt Ltd, Google Ireland Ltd, and Google Asia Pacific Pte Ltd under Section 19 (1) (a) of the Competition Act, 2002, which led the latest probe against the tech giant.
“Members of the Informant are forced to share their news content to Google to prioritise their web links in the Search Engine Result Page (SERP) of Google. Thus, Google free rides on the content of the members of Informant without giving them adequate compensation,” NBDA said.
News Media Houses are oblivious about the total advertising revenue collected by Google and what percentage of the advertising revenue is being transferred to a media organization. According to the reports of INS, ‘The European Publishers Council had also filed a completion complaint against Google alleging that Google has got the end-to-end control of the ad tech value chain.
The Broadcasters & Digital Association said that its members were forced to give google their news content to boost their web links priority on Google’s Search Engine Result Page (SERP). Google developed services like Google News, Google Discover, and Google Accelerator Mobile Pages by taking benefit of user’s reliance on the search engine it offers for more engagement and more traffic.
The complainant also added that users of Google, Search for news using the SERP model. Google induced in its SERPs through featured snippets including ‘Top Stories’carousels.
In a four-page order given on 6 October and made Public on Friday, CCI clearly stated that the allegations are essentially the same as those of the case that the regulator is already looking into. CCI has also requested the DG to summarise the matters and submit a consolidated investigation report.
In May 2022, The Canadian government tabled legislation that aims to introduce transparency in sharing of revenue between digital news publishers and intermediary platforms such as Google and Facebook. Moreover, Australia asked Google to pay for news. In February last year, The Australian Parliament passed The News Media and Digital platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code. The new code motivated tech giants and news organizations to negotiate payment deals and forced Facebook and Google to invest tens of millions of dollars in digital content.
