CCI Findings In Google Vs Indian News Publishers Dispute 'In Matter Of Weeks', To Bring Regulatory Clarity

(MENAFN- Live Mint) New Delhi: The Competition Commission of India (CCI) is set to deliver its findings after a two-year probe into complaints from digital news publishers against Google, claiming they are not getting their fair share of advertisement revenue, two persons informed about the development said.

The report by the CCI's Director General of Investigation will throw light on whether Google, being a major player in internet search and online advertisements, abused its market dominance to disadvantage news publishers who invest heavily in news operations.

It will also lay down the regulatory position on whether Google should pay publishers for the news summary the search engine carries on its search result pages.

News publishers had told the CCI that there has been a surge in 'zero-click searches'-where the internet user is satisfied with the news summary posted on the search result pages and does not actually click on the news publisher's website.

This enables Google to display its ads on the search result page but publishers lose out on traffic and revenue.

News publishers said they get revenue only on the traffic they get on their sites and that they did not have access to data about the revenue generated by the search engine.

CCI had ordered a probe into this case in January 2022 on information filed by the Digital News Publishers Association, which was later clubbed with complaints filed by The Indian Newspaper Society and the News Broadcasters & Digital Association.

The complaints named Alphabet Inc., Google LLC, Google India Private Ltd. and Google Ireland Ltd as parties.

More than half the traffic to websites of news organizations come through Google search results, the petitioners told the CCI, according to the regulator's order initiating the probe. The CCI also made a 'first impression observation' that Google occupies a significant position in the market for online digital advertising intermediation services.

“The investigation report is expected in a matter of weeks. It will lay down the regulator's position on the dispute in digital news aggregation business,” said the one of the two persons quoted above. Once the investigation report comes, the CCI will reach out to all the parties, give them a hearing and then adjudicate on the matter.

This would be under the existing regime of ex-post enforcement, under which regulatory action is taken after an alleged anti-trust violation takes place, as opposed to a proposed ex-ante or forward-looking framework the government is contemplating.

CCI investigations have a high rate of confirming charges of anti-competitive practices, according to experts.

Queries emailed to the CCI, Google and News Broadcasters & Digital Association on 6 October remained unanswered at the time of publishing. The email and the contact option given on the website of the Digital News Publishers Association did not function properly.

A recommendation by the parliamentary committee on finance, led by its former chairperson Jayant Sinha in December 2022 called for a fair bargaining code to enable news publishers to strike fair and transparent contracts with influential technology companies.

But this has not made it to the proposed Digital Competition Bill. Instead, the ministry of information and broadcasting is exploring a separate stand-alone law, as there is a view that this may not actually be a competition issue.

Mint had reported on 11 July that India was considering a new law to ensure fair transactions between Big Tech and news publishers, taking cues from Australia and other nations that want companies such as Google and Meta to pay for using such content on their platforms.

“Revenue sharing between news publishers and the Big Tech is an important issue and it is not appropriate to lose too much time on deciding which authority should handle the issue. There are judicial pronouncements about sectoral regulators getting precedence over competition regulator but it would be useful if a collaborative and constructive approach is taken to address the concerns of players in this segment of digital economy,” said Amol Kulkarni, director of research at CUTS International, a non-profit, non-governmental organization working on public interest issues.

'Today, news publishers have nowhere else to go. Hence all eyes are on the CCI investigation," the first person quoted above said.

Experts said a major bone of contention is over payment for publishing news snippets in the search result page. In France and Australia, this is not treated as a competition issue and hence separate legislative frameworks were introduced in there.

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