Indian Regulator Ordered an Antitrust Probe Against Google

The Indian regulator has launched an antitrust investigation against Google, Reuters reported. The reason was a complaint filed by the Digital News Publishers Association, an organization of the country's largest digital media companies, who accused the tech giant of abusing its dominant position as a news aggregation service and imposing unfair conditions on digital news publishers.

Google is effectively an intermediary between news publishers and readers, so the media are faced with a choice: agree to any Google terms or abandon the search engine-generated traffic, which will significantly affect their advertising revenue.

The association members believe that these conditions are not fair since Google takes away some of the traffic and advertising revenue, which should be given to the creators of the content, and not the intermediary.

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) suspects Google is violating the country's antitrust laws. The investigation should help determine whether Google imposes any discriminatory conditions or price on digital news publishers.