CCI unable to prove market dominance, Google tells NCLAT

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) order levying a Rs 936-crore penalty on Google was "amorphous and overbearing", the company told the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) on Wednesday, arguing that the regulator was unable to establish that Google's policies had eroded competition.

The senior counsel, continuing his arguments from Tuesday, noted that CCI had expressed concerns based on assumptions, but it had not shown contravention of norms by Google in terming the operation of Google Play Billing System (GPBS) and Google Pay as an abuse of dominance.

Google's counsel argued that "conduct resulting in distortion or action leading to anti-competitiveness in the market must be proved".

Further, the counsel said GPBS only collects service fees and "does not prevent other payment processors from venturing into the Indian payment processing market".

There may have been a reduction in the share of players in the payment market because of Google's payment system, but CCI hasn't analysed to prove that GPBS has eroded competition.

"CCI has claimed denial of market access but hasn't delineated the market," the counsel further argued.

The senior counsel contended that CCI ignored that in the specific instance of giving preference to its own UPI app, GPay, the company was following the rules laid down by the National Payments Corporation of India.

Google Play sends a payment request to the GPay app to authenticate payments, which is called a collect-flow system. The counsel argued that not all UPI apps are mature for collect-flow, hence the system was not implemented for other apps.

In the arguments on Tuesday, Google had said that it offered choices to users and developers.