Out of 113 million dollars in penalties and fines, the Competition Commission of India charged Google with abusing its dominance. According to the CCI, Google refused to allow third-party businesses to participate in its own payment mechanism, something it’s not required by law to do.
With the recent decision by Indian regulators, Google’s in-app purchases have been banned in India. The company is currently studying the verdict and determining its future moves.
A common rash of gambling-related banking and privacy violations has come to the radar of CCI. These violations included apps that banned gambling and ones that allowed it, apps that hosted a web browser and those that didn’t, apps that sold cosmetics or were for dating, apps without age restrictions and apps with age restrictions, and Android devices without internet access.
There’s an ongoing antitrust complaint today in relation to how Google conducts its payments business. The law firm that is defending the complainant asserts that by enforcing the suit, the government will increase competition and decrease costs for app developers.
In the span of one week, Google has been hit with a total of two separate fines in India. It was also forced to pay $162 million (INR 13.38 billion) for anti-competitive practices, such as bundling Chrome and YouTube with Android, as well as restricting customers’ ability to uninstall pre-installed applications such as Maps and Gmail. This verdict was handed down on the last day of April 2018.