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Madras High Court on Friday gave interim protection from delisting to all the app developers (nine start-ups) who had moved the Division Bench in an appeal against the single judge’s recent rejection of their commercial suits in the Google Play Billing case.
The interim protection will be available to the appellants till the next date of hearing on the matter fixed for August 23., Madras High Court said.
A single judge Justice Sounthar of Madras High Court had recently dismissed the suits of 14 domestic start-ups including Bharat Matrimony, Shaadi.com, Kutumb, Unacademy, FRND, Pratilipi and Vikatan among others, stating that the matter fell within the domain of Competition Commission of India (CCI).
Enjoys monopoly
Appearing for start-ups (appellants) on Friday, Senior Counsel and former Finance Minister P Chidambaram highlighted 96 per cent apps are used by Android devices, so Google enjoys a monopoly. He highlighted that Google’s market cap is one-third of India’s GDP.
Chidambaram noted that the threat (for start-ups) is “if I don’t comply (with the new billing policy), they will delist me after which I will be effectively dead in the e-markets”.
Chief Justice Sanjay V Gangapurwala orally observed that the interim protection from delisting from Google Play Store will continue till the next date of hearing (August 23).
CCI had on October 25 last year passed an order in Google Play billing policy case where Google was directed to allow third-party billing system other than Google Play Billing System (GPBS).
Domestic start-ups lauded the CCI’s move, since Google then charged a 30 percent commission for its billing system, whereas the then prevailing market rate was around 2 percent to 5 percent.
Tech giant Google had post CCI’s order of October 25 last year expanded in January this year its User Choice Billing (UCB) policy to all developers in India and updated its UCB policy that went into effect from April 26. However the service fee charged was as high as 26 per cent (just 4 percentage points drop).
Start-ups had moved CCI stating that Google is not complying with its October 25 order in true spirit.
In between Google issued notices to start-ups to either accept UCB or else they would be be delisted. Madras HC had earlier issued an injunction order stating that Google cannot delist them. But now all the pleas of 14 start-ups (filed between April and June 2023) stand dismissed by a single judge ruling.
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