After complaint by INS, CCI orders probe against Google over news referral services
INS says the publishers of news were not being paid a fair value for the content they produced.
In a new development, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) has ordered a probe against tech giant Google for abusing its position among news publishers after a complaint was filed by The Indian Newspaper Society (INS).
An official statement from the INS read, “INS has stated Alphabet Inc, which is the parent company of Google, Google LLC, Google India Pvt Ltd, Google Ireland Ltd, and Google Asia Pacific were abusing their dominant position in the News Referral Services and Google Ad Tech Services in the Indian online news media market, which was in violation of Section 4 of the Competition Act, 2002," an INS statement said.
The statement also pointed out that the publishers of news were not being paid a fair value for the content they produced.
“Several countries, including Australia, France and Spain, have passed legislation requiring tech companies, including Google, to adequately compensate content producers for using their content and search results. The news media houses are completely kept in the dark on the total advertising revenue collected by Google and what the actual percentage of the advertising revenue is being transferred to media organisations," the statement further said.
The CCI, after examining the contentions of INS, has found that these allegations of abuse of dominant position are under the purview of the Competition Act, 2002 and that it requires a detailed investigation by the Director General. CCI has therefore passed an order to club the information submitted by INS with those made by the Digital News Publishers Association who have similar contentions.
