It's difficult for Google to justify a 30% commission on transactions when it dominates the app store space in India (despite Apple) by virtue of its dominance in Android; or even against the fact that Android gives the Play Store a competitive advantage. Google is already fairly dominant in digital advertising and gets a majority of online advertising spends. FREE READ of the day by MediaNama: Click here to sign-up for our free-read of the day newsletter delivered daily before 9 AM in your inbox. The decision to bring parity between transaction commissions in India and the US (where Google faces a case by EPIC Games), was myopic. It brought a startup ecosystem that is typically at odds with each other, together against a common enemy. The "BharOS", an Indian fork of Android launched recently to much nationalistic applause, might also get favourable policy support. However, while abuse of dominance needs to be addressed, regulators, courts and the Indian government should also take into account the cybersecurity challenges that the fragmentation of Android will create for Indian consumers. This post is released under a CC-BY-SA 4.0 license. Please feel free to republish on your site, with attribution and a link. Adaptation and rewriting, though allowed, should be true to the original.
