Google could stand to face a fine of about $1.4 billion if found guilty. The CCI has been investigating for nearly three years now.
In the ongoing market dominance abuse case against Google, the search giant has said that the company is currently reviewing the CCI's investigation report. The company said it is working with CCI and is confident that it complies completely with the Indian laws. It further added that no other courts, from countries like USA, Egypt, Taiwna etc. have shown any worries regarding the issues the CCI talked about in the report. Google has also asked CCI to maintain confidentiality over the issue and not to leak the findings to third-parites, including the media.
In the report, the CCI made a prima facie case against Google in relation to the investigation. Further, it also says that Google has failed to cooperate with the Director General (DG) and didn’t provide the information sought through various notices. The report also talks about a show cause notice that was issued to Google for explaining why no penalty should be imposed on the Search giant. Google though denied any kind of delay and replied that they have cooperated with the DG in every way, providing all the required information.
The CCI report further mentions that it asked for details regarding changes made to search algorithms by Google, from August 2010 to December 2010, and August 2011 to December 2011. Google in turn asked for 4 additional days to send the changes, but it sent only a list of changes but no details. Considering the instances mentioned above and various others, and imposed a fine of Rs. 1 crore pending investigations. The CCI also ordered Google to cooperate with the investigations.
The CCI had received complaints from about 30 companies accusing Google of manipulating search results. If the accusation comes out to be true, then Google can be asked to pay 10% of its income as fine, which amounts to about $1.4 billion.
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