Google Alleges India Antitrust Body Favoring Amazon In Android Investigation
Legal documents reveal that Google has alleged that India’s antitrust authority has directed modifications to its business model solely to safeguard competitor Amazon. The complaint arises from Amazon’s difficulties in creating an altered version of the Android system owing to Google’s imposed limitations.
Google has approached India’s Supreme Court to overturn an October order by the Competition Commission of India (CCI) asking the company to make 10 changes to its business model after the CCI found it abused its dominant market position with its Android operating system, which powers 97% of India’s smartphones.
Google’s latest Supreme Court filing shows its deepening disagreement with how the CCI conducted its Android probe.
In a lower court filing earlier in December, Google said CCI officials had “copied” parts of a European judgment against the US company in a similar case. CCI denied the charge.
The CCI’s order in October, which also fined Google $163 million, asked the company to allow modified versions of its Android operating system, called Android forks, to be freely distributed without licensing restrictions, such as restrictions on pre-installing Google apps. .
Amazon told the CCI during the investigation that Google’s restrictions prevented it from developing an Android fork called Fire OS, and Google said the watchdog unfairly relied on it in its negative decision against it, the company said in a June 26 Supreme Court filing.
“In the global world, FireOS failed commercially due to a poor user experience. In India, the Fire Phone was not even launched,” Google claimed in its 1,004-page filing, which has not been made public but was reviewed by Reuters.
“Therefore, the commission called Amazon’s failure to compete in India a failure and attributed it to the Google deals.”
The CCI’s directive was issued “only to protect Amazon – which complained that its efforts to create a forked version of Android did not work due to (Google’s) restrictions.”
Google declined to comment on the matter, citing the ongoing legal proceedings. Amazon also declined to comment, while the CCI did not respond to the Alphabet-owned company’s lawsuit, which is expected to be heard in the coming days.
In 2021, South Korea fined Google $159 million for blocking custom versions of Android.
Google has been particularly concerned about India’s Android decision, as the directives are seen as even broader than those set in the European Commission’s landmark 2018 ruling against the company’s Android market abuse.
Google has challenged both the South Korean and European orders.
The CCI said in its October ruling that its investigators found that Google’s contractual restrictions had “reduced the opportunities and incentives for device manufacturers to develop and sell” devices running Android forks, harming consumers’ interests.
Amazon told researchers in India that creating Fire OS as a forked Android required “significant resources,” including thousands of employee hours, court papers show.
Google is contesting all penalties in India’s Supreme Court, saying it has not abused its market position. The CCI wants Google to comply with all its directives, the watchdog said in a separate document seen by Reuters.
Google has made major changes to its Android business model in India as per CCI guidelines.
A lower court ruled that Google should pay the fine, confirming that it abused its market position as per the CCI’s findings, but the US company will continue to fight the case in the Supreme Court.
