India Court Issues Temporary Order on Google’s Fee for Disney+ Hotstar App
Google announced on Wednesday that the recent court order in India, which instructed the company to implement a reduced 4% in-app payment for Disney’s streaming service, will only be in effect temporarily until the court proceedings are concluded.
India-based Disney has gone to court in the latest and most significant challenge to Google’s practice of imposing a “service charge” of 11% to 26% on in-app payments. The service fee was introduced after the antitrust directive banned Google’s previous 15-30% fee and forced Google to allow third-party payments.
An Indian court said on Tuesday that Google should receive a lower 4% fee for in-app purchases from Disney Hotstar and cannot remove Disney’s app from India’s app store, a significant challenge to Google’s payments business model.
“The order is temporary in nature, and the temporary 4 percent figure is simply a fee that the developer pays Google on a monthly basis during these legal proceedings,” Google said in a statement.
Google must comply with court orders until overturned or modified.
Disney, which runs the popular Disney Hotstar streaming app in India, has challenged Google’s new billing system in court in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Its lawyers had alleged that Google threatened to remove the Hotstar app if it did not comply with the new payment system.
