Regulating Big Tech gets a push

The fair-trade regulator fined Google ₹1,337.76 crore and issued nine cease-and-desist orders. It may loosen online tech monopolies in India

It was 16 years ago, in 2006, when the Oxford and Webster dictionaries recognised google as a verb to describe the act of looking something up online. Then, a little over one billion people used the internet. Today, this number is over five billion. Through this period of boom, Google has not just retained its position as the gateway to the internet, but also expanded into new domains of personal digital devices and the online business. Today, Google makes the world’s most popularly used smartphone software (Android), email client (Gmail), web browser (Chrome) and video-sharing service (YouTube). It operates and controls — acting at once as the batter, bowler and umpire (and some would add even cricket board and match referee) — the digital advertising market, which accounted for most of its $257 billion revenue last year.

It is the sort of dominance that, on the face of it, reflects impressive technological innovation and business acumen. But at its core, it underlines monopolies in multiple markets that have, over the years, recognised the threat from it to fair trade. Since 2017, the European Union (EU) has slapped close to 8 billion euros in penalties in three antitrust rulings against the company. On Thursday, India joined the EU, penalising the company $162 million for abusing its position as the developer of the Android mobile operating system. At the heart of the action is the assessment by India’s fair trade regulator, the Competition Commission of India (CCI), that Google abused its dominant position in five markets — for mobile operating system software (OS), app stores, web search services, web browsers and online video hosting services — to steer users to “interact with its revenue earning service ie, online search”. The fine, which comes to ₹1,337.76 crore, may be no more than a slap on the wrist, but what is likely to hurt Google more are nine specific “ceaseand-desist” orders by the regulator. These orders mean the company will have to now loosen its controls by allowing, for instance, other app stores to offer applications on its Play Store and letting users delete Google’s apps and choose which search engine they want to use. Crucially, Google has also been restricted from forcing device makers to bundle its applications on their products or restrict them from using other versions of the mobile OS. Google can, and most likely will, challenge the order in court. CCI is also separately investigating Google for its billing policies that are criticised for high commissions on transactions.

To be fair, such monopolistic practices are not limited to Google alone. Meta, Amazon and Apple have similar dominance in various other parts of the digital market, including digital news. In a report in 2020, the US House Judiciary Committee said its investigation found Apple abused its position to exert monopoly power over app developers; Amazon has monopoly over the e-commerce sector and Meta has unchallenged dominance in social media. The US is now considering a host of laws to end this dominance and allow citizens, both as users and businesses depending on these companies, more choice. In this regard, India fired an important first shot this week. Reining in Big Tech is one of the world’s biggest challenges today, for the sake of not just business but also society at large.