Supreme Court agrees to hear startups' pleas against Google's billing policy

Google taken to Supreme Court by start ups

The Supreme Court on February 9 agreed to hear pleas by a bunch of startups challenging tech giant Google's billing policy.

A bench led by Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, however, refused to pass an interim order protecting these startups from being removed from Google's Play Store. Thus making way for Google to remove the apps of these startups if they are not in agreement with the billing policy. Senior advocates Mukul Rohatgi and Balbir Singh, who appeared for the the startups urged the court to protect them till the disposal of the appeal as they are small companies.

The CJI however refused to pass any interim orders as the startups had lost both before the single judge and the division bench.

On January 19, a two-judge bench of the Madras High Court dismissed a plea by startups, including Bharat Matrimony, Shaadi.com and Unacademy, which challenged the order of a single judge of the court.

The judge had ruled their pleas as “not maintainable”, saying the CCI had the jurisdiction to adjudicate on the issue.

The high court held that the Competition Commission of India (CCI) was empowered to direct any enterprise guilty of abuse of dominant position to discontinue such practices, hence an order passed by CCI would apply to all the businesses.

In early 2023, the court 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.

The petitioners had challenged Google's notice to either adopt its new billing policy or face delisting from the app marketplace.

Google said in May 2023 that it would start enforcing its Play billing policy in India.

A few months earlier, CCI fined Google Rs 936.44 crore for abusing its dominant position about its Play Store policies.

It had directed the company not to restrict app developers from using third-party billing or payment processing services to purchase apps or for in-app billing on Google Play.