Whatsapp has won an antitrust case in India, filed with the Competition Commission of India (CCI) by Vinod Kumar Gupta, a Chartered Accountant representing "Fight for Transparency Society". The CCI has ruled that while Whatsapp is dominant, it is not abusing its dominant position. The allegations 1. Privacy Policy: Whatsapp had brought changes to its privacy policy on August 25th 2016, forcing users to share their account details with Facebook, in order to avail the services of Whatsapp. According to the complaint, Whatsapp is on 95% of Android devices in India with a user base of over 70 million users (Editors note: it's actually over 200 million monthly active users). The manner in which the consent was taken for sharing data with Facebook was deceptive, and consumers are not equipped to understand the privacy policy. The privacy policy is in contravention of the provisions of Section 4 of the Competition Act 2002. 2. Predatory pricing: Whatsapp used to charge $0.99 as an annual subscription fee. It is now free, and this is owing to funds being sourced from its parent company Facebook. 3. Sharing of data is a violation of provisions in the IT Act. However, CCI declined to look into this aspect of the allegations, since these "do not fall within the purview of examination under the provisions of the [Competition] Act. The Assessment What is Whatsapp's market, when looking at it from an anti-trust perspective in India? Whatsapp's market is for "instant messaging services using consumer communication apps…
