CCI order in play store billing case not backed by findings: Google

New Delhi: Google's parent Alphabet Inc said on Thursday that the Competition Commission of India's order holding the company guilty of abuse of its dominant position in the market was pre-emptive and not backed by findings or analysis.

Alphabet made this submission before the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) where it had challenged the competition watchdog's October 2022 order imposing a penalty and certain conditions on Google.

The CCI had slapped a ₹936 crore fine on the search giant, concluding that the company's policies related to the Google Play Store Billing Payment System and integration of the Google Pay payment app into Google Play Store eroded competition in India's digital apps market.


Alphabet's counsel argued that payments through Google Pay on the Play Store make up less than 1% of the total Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions and, therefore, Google wasn't in a position to dominate the market let alone erode competition.

The CCI had narrowly defined the market for investigating if integrating Google Pay into the Play Store resulted in erosion of competition, he argued.

The watchdog excluded digital payment methods such as credit cards, debit cards and other UPI apps from the market definition even though these methods could substitute Google Pay, the counsel said, adding that the "CCI lost sight of interchangeability or substitutability test".

According to the counsel, the CCI considered Google's revenue from the entire Android ecosystem to calculate the penalty even though the SC had declared that only the revenue of the vertical under investigation was relevant.

The NCLAT listed the matter for December 11 for the CCI to present its side of the case.