NEW DELHI: The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has ordered an investigation by its Director General into complaints against Google for abusing its dominant position related to news referral services and Google Ad Tech Services in the Indian online news media market, said a statement from the Indian Newspapers Society.
The statement added that media houses are kept in the dark on the total advertising revenue collected by Google and what percentage of the advertising revenue is being transferred to media organisations.
According to INS, the European Publishers Council had also filed a competition complaint against Google alleging that the tech giant has achieved end to end control of the ad tech value chain, thus abusing its dominant position.
“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 statement read.
The INS has also highlighted the fact that the producer or 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.
Countries like Australia, France and Spain have passed legislation requiring tech companies, including Google, to adequately compensate content producers for using their content on search results, it added.
“The CCI after examining the contentions of INS, found that prima facie 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 accordingly 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.”
INS is working towards obtaining proper compensation for content generation for its members and other news publishers for fair payment and transparency from Google.