Designed by India’s premier institute, IIT Madras, funded by Indian Government, developed by JandK Operations Private Limited (JandKops), free and open-source, is getting an alternative to the most dominant mobile operating systems of Android and iOS.

An operating system, that boasts of complete privacy, with all the data sitting in the data centers in India. This is a good alternative to CCI‘s fine imposed on Google for their dominant position for over 100s of millions.

Android, as part of Google’s open source operating system, is forked out to BharOS.

Google has decided to appeal Competition Commission of India’s fine over ‘unfair’ business practices on Android.

Google was fined $113.60 million by Competition Commission of India in relation with Play Store policies in October 2022. The Competition Commission of India found Google requiring device manufacturers to pre-install its entire Google Mobile Suite and mandating prominent placement of those apps “imposition of unfair condition on the device manufacturers” and thus was in “contravention of the provisions of Section 4(2)(a)(i) of the Act.

Google informed that it has decided to approach National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), the nation’s appellate tribunal, to appeal against the fine.

Google starts third-party billing in play store with Spotify and Bumble’s users as the chosen ones for the pilot testing.

It hasn’t been a secret that Google and Apple have long been restricting their App developers to use only their own payment gateways for any purchases on Play Store as well as in-app purchases. While this has brought in a lot of revenue to both of them, so has it brought in lot many penalties across many country’s competition watchdogs blaming them of misusing their dominant position in the market and direct terms on the developers going against healthy competition. The latest one of such penalties coming from the Competition Commission of India imposing a fine of $113.60 million on Google for such practices.

Google announced the policy change, called User Choice Billing, in March. They call it a “pilot,” and expanded the test to the U.S., Brazil, and South Africa on Thursday in addition to previous regions including Australia, India, and Europe.

As per the User Choice Billing, Google is basically allowing end users to choose if they want to be billed directly inside the app, without the app owners being charged the, close to 30%, cut by the Play Store, or they want to continue to be billed via the Play Store, where the current commissions remain as they were. So while it is a welcome move by Google to give both, the app owners as well as app users, a choice, they still make it mandatory that the choice should remain and that Google Play Store billing is not going anywhere.

Google said the pilot is available to non-gaming apps that comply with its user interface guidelines about how to implement the billing. Also, Google will continue to charge developers the service fees. Developers must pay Google the applicable service fees. When a consumer chooses to use an alternative billing system, the service fee the developer pays will be reduced by 4% as it helps support their investments in Play Store and Android.

The Competition Commission of India, for the second time within a month, has fined Google, for abusing its dominant position, this time with respect to its Play Store policies.

Only last week, the Indian competition watchdog had fined Google $161.95 million with respect to its Android mobile device policies.

As per the press release, the Commission found Google to be dominant in the markets for licensable OS for smart mobile devices & market for app stores for Android smart mobile OS, in India.

Google’s Play Store policies require the App developers to exclusively and mandatorily use Google Play’s Billing System not only for receiving payments for Apps but also for certain in-app purchases. Further, app developers cannot, within an app, provide users with a direct link to a webpage containing an
alternative payment method or use language that encourages a user to purchase the digital item outside of the app.

Google has been fighting this battle of being asked to open up its Play Store payment methods to alternative payment methods as well, over and above the ones offered by Google, across multiple countries.

As of now, there is no response from Google on the fine. We’ll keep the post updated as more news comes in.

The Competition Commission of India (Commission) has imposed a penalty of Rs.1337.76 crore ($161.95 million) on Google for abusing its dominant position in multiple markets in the Android Mobile device ecosystem, apart from issuing cease and desist order.

In April 2019, the regulator ordered a detailed probe in the matter following complaints by consumers of Android-based smartphones in the country. Android is an open-source, mobile operating system installed by Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) of smartphones and tablets.

As per the release, the Commission has examined various practices of Google w.r.t. licensing of this Android mobile operating system and various proprietary mobile applications of Google like Play Store, Google Search, Google Chrome, YouTube, etc. The demand for the same, come from three different sets of consumers…

• Smart device OEMs who wish to install an app store to make their smart devices commercially viable and marketable
• App developers, who want to offer their services to the end users
• End users to wish to access app stores to access content or avail other services

They found Google to be dominant in all the above mentioned relevant markets.

Google and OEMs enter into multiple agreements to govern their rights and obligations like Mobile Application Distribution Agreement (MADA), Anti-fragmentation Agreement (AFA), Android Compatibility Commitment Agreement (ACC), Revenue Sharing Agreement (RSA), etc.

This leaves the OEMs with no other choice but to make sure that the first entry point of search remains Google search. First choice of video remains Youtube. First choice of browser remains Chrome, etc. Even if the OEMs themselves want to, they cannot replace their own alternatives to the ones pre-installed by Google.

Based on all of the above arguments, the Commission has imposed monetary penalty as well as issued cease and desist order against Google from indulging in anti-competitive practices.

This will be a continously updated article and will post updates as we keep getting them.