Startups challenge Madras HC order on Google's billing system in Supreme Court

The legal battle against Google has been taken to the SC by startups

A bunch of startups have filed appeals in the Supreme Court against Madras High Court order dismissing its plea challenging Google's app billing policy.

The case which was filed on January 30 is now likely to be heard by the Supreme Court on February 9.

On January 19, a two judge bench of the Madras High Court had dismissed a plea by startups including Matrimony which had challenged the order of a single judge of the high court . The single judge had held that their pleas against the tech giant as 'not maintainable' since the startups alleging abuse of the dominant position by Google, the CCI has jurisdiction to adjudicate on the same.

The high court held that CCI is empowered to direct any enterprise guilty of abuse of dominant position to discontinue such practices, hence any order passed by CCI under such circumstances would apply to all the businesses. However, in the case of the present proceedings, such an order will be made applicable only to the company that has challenged Google's policy.

The court had in early 2023 provided an interim injunction to these companies, asking them to pay a lower 4 percent fee to Google for using its in-app payments system. It also directed the tech giant not to delist any of them from the Play Store.

This was after petitioners had approached the state high court challenging Google's notice to either adopt its new app billing policy or face delisting from the app marketplace in recent months. Google had stated in May 2023 that it would start enforcing its Play billing policy in India.

Google was penalised in October 2022 by India's anti-trust Competition Commission of India (CCI) fined Google Rs 936.44 crore for abusing its dominant position with regard to its Play Store policies, in addition to issuing a cease-and-desist order.

It has directed the tech giant not to restrict app developers from using any third-party billing or payment processing services to purchase apps or for in-app billing on Google Play apart from a series of measures to modify the company's app payment policies within three months.