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CUTS accredited by Credibility Alliance
CUTS files PIR with CCI to monitor
Google Dominance in Indian Internet market
August 24, 2011
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CUTS has filed a Preliminary
Information Report (PIR) with the Competition Commission of
India (CCI) urging the agency to investigate the potential
anticompetitive conduct of Google in the Indian internet,
e-commerce market, online advertising and related markets.
Google is the largest search
engine in the world as also in India. Most users of the
internet in India, now numbering about 100 million ,are
regular users of Google. The Indian internet market, search
and advertising, is potentially the largest market in the
world.
The basic concern of CUTS is
that Google does not use its dominance in the search
engine/online advertising markets to affect the growth of
Indian search and advertising markets as well as related
fast growing e-commerce markets like online shopping and
online travel sites. In addition that Google does not
undertake anticompetitive mergers which harm the growth of
Indian e-commerce or online advertising.
Google is currently under
investigation in several jurisdictions around the world
including the USA (by the Federal Trade Commission), the EU
(by the European Commission) and the Attorney General of the
State of Texas and some others, all of which have inspired
the present CUTS PIR.
The complaint against Google in
the EU was brought by service search providers alleging
unfavourable treatment of their services in Google’s unpaid
and sponsored search results along with preferential
placement of Google’s own services. Whether Google lowered
the page placement of unpaid results of services with which
it competes , such as price comparison or specialised search
and placed its own services higher to shut out competition
is under investigation.
The online search and
advertising industry in India is growing at a very high
rate. Last year all of the e-commerce market in India was
about $5 billion. It is estimated that this will grow to $40
billion by 2015. Non travel e-commerce alone is expected to
grow to a $30 billion industry in 4-5 years. Worldwide,
Google has been widely criticised by online travel sites
(like Expedia, Kayak) and local business review sites. They
claim that Google promotes links to its own services such as
local business information depriving their sites of
potential traffic.
For more details, please contact:
Madhav Dar, Senior Policy Analyst at
mkd@cuts.org or +91(0)9811665914 |
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