New Delhi: Fair trade regulator CCI on Friday ordered a probe against Google for its alleged abuse of dominant position.
"In a well-functioning democracy, the critical role played by news media cannot be undermined, and it needs to be ensured that digital gatekeeper firms do not abuse their dominant position to harm the competitive process of determining a fair distribution of revenue amongst all stakeholders," CCI said.
It added that the Commission is of prima facie view that Google has violated provisions of Section 4 of the Competition Act, 2002 which pertains to abuse of dominant position.
The order came on a complaint filed by the Digital News Publishers Association, which is a private company that promotes and secures interest of digital news publishers.
It had filed complaint against Alphabet Inc, Google LLC, Google India Private Ltd and Google Ireland Ltd.
The association said that the majority of the traffic on news websites comes from online search engines and Google is claimed to be the most dominant search engine.
It said that more than 50 per cent of the total traffic on the news websites is routed through Google and being the dominant player, Google, by way of its algorithms, determines which news website gets discovered via search.
Besides, Google is the major stakeholder in the digital advertising space and it unilaterally decides the amount to be paid to the publishers for the content created by them, as well as the terms on which the aforesaid amounts have to be paid.
It further said that the members of the association have to suffer a loss of advertising revenues and the inability to bargain a fair share in the value chain of news dissemination, despite working and generating credible news.
It said that there is lack of transparency in online digital advertising intermediation services, which makes it difficult for publishers to audit and verify the ad revenue generated on their websites.