CCI said this to counter the tech giant’s argument that Google offers Android open source for free to OEMs. The anti-trust watchdog began its arguments in Google’s appeal against the order holding that the company abused its dominant position in the ecosystem to impose unfair conditions on OEMs.
Google said it will continue to appeal against CCI's Android antitrust order.
The SC verdict will give impetus to the government and the country's consumers, media, app developers, OEMs and the industry towards creating an alternate ecosystem that will be independent from foreign big tech, said industry players
In its hearing, the apex court also noted extended tech giant's time to comply with the CCI order by one week. It also asked NCLAT to dispose the case by March 31.
N. Venkatraman, Additional Solicitor General of India for CCI, said at the hearing before the Supreme Court that Google only filed an appeal against the CCI judgement with the NCLAT in the month of December—one day before the statute of limitations was set to expire.
The search giant is set to argue that parts of the CCI order have been plagiarized from Competition proceedings in European Union and that the order is 'extraordinary' and suffers from 'errors', CNBC-TV 8 report added.
The CCI said that Google leveraged its dominant position in the app store market for Android OS to protect its position in online general search and slapped a fine of Rs 1,337.76 crore