While the report from the Competition Commission of India investigating Google in India hasn't yet been made public, the Economic Times reported yesterday that CCI has charged Google on two counts: 1. That Google's proprietary content supersedes the relevance of search by an individual: The examples used include Google Finance getting priority over MoneyControl, just the same way that Google Hotels allegedly gets preference over other travel portals. 2. That Sponsored links thrown up after a search are dependent purely on the amount of advertising paid to Google, and sometimes even supersede the link of the actual trademarks being searched. Google has issued a boilerplate statement in response, a copy of which MediaNama also received: “We’re currently reviewing this report from the CCI’s ongoing investigation. We continue to work closely with the CCI and remain confident that we comply fully with India’s competition laws” and "Regulators and courts around the world, including in the U.S., Germany, Taiwan, Egypt and Brazil, have looked into and found no concerns on many of the issues raised in this report." MediaNama's take 1. When is this relevant: Firstly, the investigation is only relevant if Google has a dominant position when it comes to search in India. As a private platform, they are free to be on-neutral, and it's only when dependencies are inordinately high in the market, in a way that there is little room for competition to Google search, and its practices advantage its own services at the expense of others, should this matter. So, ask…
