Supreme Court of India today announced that it will be hearing the cross pleas filed by Google and the Competition Commission of India (CCI) which challenges the verdict of an appellate tribunal in the case relating to alleged anti-competitive activities followed by Google in their Android mobile devices.
The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) on March 29, gave a mixed verdict on Google’s alleged practice of anti-competitiveness. It upheld the fine of Rs 1,338 crore on Google but scrapped the conditions like hosting third-party app stores on Google run Play Store. NCLAT while upholding the imposition of the fine, struck down CCI’s order that said Google will not restrict the removal of its pre-installed apps by the users.
Both CCI and Alphabet Inc-owned Google approached Supreme Court against the NCLAT order. A bench led by CJI DY Chandrachud and Justice PS Narsimha accepted the appeals from both the parties and adjourned the hearing till next Friday due to unavailability of senior advocate Harish Salve, who is representing one of the parties.
NCLAT in its 189-page order, upheld CCI’s directions, including one in which Google has been asked to allow their new users to choose their choice of search engine in the initial device setup and another which said that OEM’s cannot be forced to pre-install a bouquet of applications. The Appellate asked Google to implement the said instructions and deposit the amount in 30 days.
CCI put Google under radar for alleged anti-competitive practices on October 20 last year in relation to the Android OS which runs on majority of mobile phone device. The regulator also ordered the internet giant to cease and desist from various unfair business practices. Google challenged CCI’s order before the NCLAT and out of 10 directions issued by CCI to Google, NCLAT upheld six of them and asked Google to make implementation within 30 days.
