Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas has won a favourable landmark report from the Competition Commission of India (CCI) director general for its client Bharat Matrinmony and an NGO against internet giant Google, which was represented by AZB & Partners and Economic Laws Practice (ELP), reported The Economic Times.
Shardul Amarchand represented Bharat Matrimony and APJ-SLG Law acted for Consumer Unity and Trust Society, which filed the original complaints against Google.
The CCI’s director general found that Google had abused its dominant position, favouring its own non-search businesses over that of rivals such as MakeMyTrip or MapMyIndia, while Flipkart alleged that the rank of its Google results “appear to have a correlation with the amount of money Flipkart spends on SEM (search engine marketing) advertising on Google”.
A total of 30 internet companies’ submitted responses to the CCI, according to the ET, though one of the world’s largest ad buyers, GroupM, reportedly responded that it had “not faced any problems” in its usage of Google services.
The ET reported that:
The commission’s report finds Google liable on two counts. First, Google’s proprietary content supersedes relevance of the search by an individual. This means, for example, even though Moneycontrol.com may have a higher hit rate for a stock market search in India, Google Finance links are given priority. Similarly, Google Hotels gets preference over other travel portals that may have higher traffic and therefore mathematically more appropriate as first results of a search.
The second is that the sponsored links thrown up after a search are dependent purely on the amount of advertising paid to Google, and sometimes even supersede the link of the actual trademarks being searched. Flipkart, in its observation, said it has found search results to have a direct correlation with the amount of money the ecommerce portal spends on Google advertising. A Flipkart spokesman declined comment on the company’s response.
Google must respond to the findings by 10 September, after which it will face the seven-member CCI in hearings, which could allow the anti-trust regulator to impose restrictions on Google’s business in India or fine it up to 10 per cent of its annual revenue of $66bn.
Update 1: The director general solicited comments from the following companies:
Internet companies
- Microsoft
- Yahoo
- Rediff
- Interactive Corp
- Octothorpe
Travel / maps
- Makemytrip
- Trip Advisor
- Yatra
- Cleartrip
- Nokia / Here Maps
- MapMyIndia
Other online
- Flipkart
- JustDial
- Info Edge (runs Naukri and Simply Married)
- Times Internet
- Times Business Solutions
- Network 18
- Media2win
Ad agencies:
- GroupM
- Lintas
- Madison
- Contract Advertising
- TLG India
- Hungama Digital Solutions
- Web Chutney
- Facebook FCB ULKA
- Rediffusion
- Y&Rediff
- Ogilvy & Mathers
Comments
That is only once the decision is final - is it final here> Has a decision of guilt been made? The answer is NO. One can only see the forces behind at play. *Disgust*
But more philosophically, how do you define win or lose? One way of doing so is asking if your client is happy with the outcome.
Since the DG's report is almost entirely against Google and in agreement with the complainants, it looks like a bit of a victory for BharatMatrimony and CUTS.
Hence it's not too much to say that it's a bit of a win for SAM, and that AZB-ELP now have their work cut out before the CCI to ask them to ignore the DG's prima facie findings.
True story is that funding of litigation is by Microsoft!
True story is that funding of litigation is by Microsoft![/quote]
Kian -- is that true?
NO.
Because people in positions where they can impact other businesses through a level of user dependence are required under competition law (and hopefully soon under telecom law) to act in a fair, unbiased, and non-discriminatory manner. That's the point of the law. Google cannot put it's own companies first unless they're the most relevant. That's unfair to users who are led to believe that the first result is most relevant, and to others making services that compete with Google in the downstream market, as they're being pushed off the top of the search page.
In the long run, competitors of Google's "companies" will no longer have the users required to fund innovation and will slowly die out. You'll then be stuck with Google, the internet behemoth, with no competition and, therefore, no reason to innovate itself, leading to worse services. This is already true for search services, where they are so large that they can put results at the top of their page even when these results aren't the most relevant (but instead belong to their own companies)
so the concern is not merely that 'its business' shows up first.. rather i assume that the concern is that companies will eventually have no idea but to pay advertising fees to google if they want their listings to be displayed.
so the concern is not merely that 'its business' shows up first.. rather i assume that the concern is that companies will eventually have no idea but to pay advertising fees to google if they want their listings to be displayed.[/quote]
SAM's lawyers seem pretty busy ^^^
so the concern is not merely that 'its business' shows up first.. rather i assume that the concern is that companies will eventually have no idea but to pay advertising fees to google if they want their listings to be displayed.[/quote]
SAM's lawyers seem pretty busy ^^^[/quote]
Looks like they have the time to comment on Legally India, which is pretty vela in my book