NEW DELHI: The Delhi high court on Tuesday refused to urgently hear an appeal by Google against an order directing the Competition Commission of India (CCI) to decide the application filed by start-ups against the tech giant’s new in-app billing policy.
The HC had on Monday ordered the CCI to hear plea of Alliance of Digital India Foundation (ADIF), an industry body of start-ups, urgently against Google’s user choice billing system (UCB). Google is to introduce the new billing system on April 26, 2023.
The ADIF, which has members like PaytM, Matrimony.com, TrulyMadly, MapMyIndia and several other start-ups, said the move of the US tech giant violates the anti-trust watchdog’s order. The CCI on October 25, 2022, directed Google to not impose any condition on app developers which is unfair, unreasonable or discriminatory to the services provided to them.
On April 24, the HC had asked the CCI to hear the application moved against Google’s UCB. Subsequently, the competition regulator had summoned Google and representatives of Indian start-ups on April 25 to hear ADIF’s plea against the tech giant’s new billing policy. However, Google has filed an appeal against a single-judge order of the Delhi high court.
The appeal was mentioned before a Bench of Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Subramonium Prasad by Google, which requested that the matter be listed on Tuesday. However, the bench refused to hear its case on Tuesday.