Competition Commission of India fines Google on claims of search bias

[NemesisPrime_691]

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has imposed a fine of around of INR 136 Crore ($21 million) over anti-trust issues surrounding the abuse of their search dominance.

 

According to the claim, Google was found putting its own flight search results at a higher position of the page causing a disadvantage to the local businesses trying to gain market.

 

Quote from NDTV :

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"Google was found to be indulging in practices of search bias and by doing so, it causes harm to its competitors as well as to users," the CCI said in a 190-page order.

"Google was leveraging its dominance in the market for online general web search, to strengthen its position in the market for online syndicate search services," the CCI said.

 

In India, the Commission found, that Google through its search design had placed its commercial flight search function at a prominent position on the search results page to the disadvantage of businesses trying to gain market access.

A Google spokesman had the following to say:

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"We have always focused on innovating to support the evolving needs of our users. The Competition Commission of India has confirmed that, on the majority of issues it examined, our conduct complies with Indian competition laws," he said.

 

Naval Chopra, a partner at a law firm was surprised to see Google being fined with such a small amount considering how much revenue it generates in total in India.

 

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Google will need to deposit the fine within 60 days, the Commission said.

Source: https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/google-fined-rs-136-crore-for-unfair-business-practices-by-competition-commission-1810375?amp=1&akamai-rum=off

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-google-antitrust/indias-antitrust-watchdog-fines-google-for-abusing-dominant-position-idUSKBN1FS2AD

 

The article says that Google is getting fined, sure, but it does not say anywhere that the search results will need to be corrected to allow for a healthy competition.

 

I thought after the EU anti-trust fiasco, Google had to be more careful regarding search results. Still, the amount being fined is really small for a company this big. 

[Guest]

Probably just buy their way out of it. Not a big fan of this company any more.

[Carclis]

4 hours ago, abhinavsaprey said:

Still, the amount being fined is really small for a company this big.

The idea that companies should be punished for the potential damage they caused in addition to fines for wrongdoing seems to be a foreign concept. In all likelihood the fine has  already been paid for in additional sales created as well as ad revenue generated from traffic on their own partnered pages as a result of this malpractice.

[mr moose]

The only thing I wish they would do is make such services promote quite clearly that their search results are biased toward financial incentives. Unless of course the search engine algorithm is shown to be simply a list of websites in descending order of search term content and not organised by further filters or programs. 

 

I don't care if google put their own or paid services at the top of the list, so long as I know they are and can use a different search engine. 

 

In fact if apple or MS where smart, they would offer a paid search engine service that let the user decide the order in which search terms were processed.