Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown. This seems to be the recurring story for Google.
Less than a day after French regulators hit Google, and Facebook, with fines totalling 210m euros ($238.m/AED876.2) over the use of cookies, comes the news that the Competition Commission of India (CCI) is opening a probe into the tech giant over allegedly “abusing its dominance” in news aggregation.
The competition watchdog said its initial view was that Google had broken some antitrust laws.
According to a Reuters report, in its order, the CCI said Google dominates certain online search services in the country and may have imposed unfair conditions on news publishers.
Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA), which comprises the digital arms of some of India’s biggest media companies, said Google denied fair advertising revenue to its members.
In a 21-page order, CCI said that Google has broken the local antitrust laws.
“The allegations of the informant, when seen in this vertically integrated ecosystem operated by Google, makes it prima facie appear that news publishers have no choice but to accept the terms and conditions imposed by Google,” the CCI said in its order on Friday.
“Google appears to operate as a gateway between various news publishers on the one hand and news readers on the other. Another alternative for the news publisher is to forgo the traffic generated by Google for them, which would be unfavourable to their revenue generation.”
In its order, the CCI mentioned new rules in France and Australia, where Google has been asked to enter into “fair/good faith negotiation” with news publishers.
In its complaint, the DNPA said that the market-leading position has allowed Google to force the publishers into several unfavourable terms. A majority of the traffic on news websites comes from online search engines, where Google is the most dominant search engine.
The CCI said that in a well-functioning democracy “the critical role played by news media cannot be undermined, and it needs to be ensured that digital gatekeeper firms do not abuse their dominant position to harm the competitive process of determining a fair distribution of revenue amongst all stakeholders”.
Cookie crumbles for Google in France
In France, Google was fined 150m euros, and Facebook, now owned by Meta, was fined 60m euros.
The Commission Nationale Informatique & Libertés (CNIL) said it had found that while the tech giants provided a virtual button to allow the immediate acceptance of cookies, there was no equivalent to refuse them as easily.
The CNIL said both sites were making it difficult for internet users to refuse the online trackers. Consent for the use of cookies is key to the EU’s data-privacy regulation. The two tech firms have three months to comply or face penalties of 100,000 euros for each day of delay.
In December last year, Russia fined Google $98.4 million and Meta $27 million (based on their turnover in the country) over refusal to remove banned content.
And a month before that, Italian authorities slapped a 10 million euro fine on Apple and Google over commercial use of user data.
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