On a request by Google, the court gave the company a week from today to comply with the Competition Commission of India (CCI) directives, reported The Hindu.
The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected Google's plea to block the Competition Commission's directive to pay a penalty of $162 million for "abuse of a dominance" in the Android ecosystem. The Commission's demand that Google change its marketing policy for the Android platform also remains in effect.
At the same time, the Supreme Court decided not to interfere in the consideration of the case on the merits and left the right to decide on the appeal of Google on the verdict of the Commission to the lower court. At the same time, the Supreme Court set the deadline for consideration of the appeal - until March 31. At the request of Google, the company was given a week from January 19 to comply with the directives of the Competition Commission.
Google appealed to the Supreme Court after an appeals court in early January rejected the company's request to block the Commission's antitrust ruling. The company argued that complying with the Commission's directives would harm Google's longstanding business model and consumer interests.
As a reminder, the Competition Commission's investigation concluded that Google had leveraged its dominant position in markets, such as online search and the app store for Android, to protect the position of its apps like Chrome and YouTube in mobile web browsers and online video hosting.
The Commission cited the need to grant Android device makers a license to install the Play Store app without the obligation to pre-install any of the company's software products, including its search engine, Chrome browser and YouTube video service.
In addition, the Commission's order requires Google to provide Indian users with the ability to uninstall pre-installed apps that cannot currently be uninstalled by normal software means.
