India’s Antitrust Watchdog Orders Another Google Probe

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has ordered another detailed probe against tech giant Google for alleged unfair revenue sharing terms with respect to news content.

The case will be clubbed with two other ongoing matters against the search engine major where the allegations are substantially the same, according to the Competition Commission of India (CCI).

The latest order has come on a complaint filed by the News Broadcasters & Digital Association. In January this year, CCI ordered a probe against Google on a complaint filed by the Digital News Publishers Association. Later, the Indian Newspaper Society also filed a similar case and that was clubbed with the first one.

Now, the regulator’s investigative arm’s Director General (DG) will submit a consolidated investigation report, the watchdog said in an order released on Friday. The News Broadcasters & Digital Association had alleged that its members are forced to provide their news content to Google in order to prioritise their weblinks in the Search Engine Result Page (SERP) of Google. 

As a result, Google free-rides on the content of the members without giving them adequate compensation, as per the complaint.

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