The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal has declined to provide interim relief to tech major Google on a second penalty of `936.44 crore that was imposed on it by the Competition Commission of India (CCI).
The appeal by Google against the CCI order was heard by the NCLAT on Wednesday. A two-member Bench comprising of Justice Rakesh Kumar and Alok Srivastava also directed Google to deposit 10% of the penalty before the registry in the next four weeks and issued notices to the CCI and others.
The matter will now be heard on April 17.
On January 4, NCLAT had declined to provide relief to Google on another penalty of Rs1,338 crore that was imposed by the CCI as well as a cease and desist direction for abuse of dominant position of its Android mobile operating system. The US tech major has since filed an appeal in the Supreme Court on the matter.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to hear Google’s plea against the NCLAT order.
In October 2022, the CCI had issued two orders against Google. The first one on October 20 had imposed the `1,338 crore penalty, while the second order on October 26 had imposed another penalty of `936-crore for abusing its dominant position on the Android mobile app store. In both the cases, Google has been asked to cease and desist from such practices in future.
“Based on its assessment, the CCI found Google to be dominant in the markets for licensable OS for smart mobile devices & market for app stores for Android smart mobile OS, in India,” CCI had said in the second order.
It had also noted that making access to the Play Store dependent on mandatory usage of Google Play’s Billing System for paid apps and in-app purchases is one sided and arbitrary and devoid of any legitimate business interest.
(With PTI inputs)