Google on Friday began removing some apps, including popular matrimony apps, from its Play Store in India over a dispute on service fee payments.
Google said 10 companies in the country, including “many well-established” had avoided paying fees despite benefiting from the platform.
It did not name the firms but a search of Play Store on android phones did not give results for matrimonial apps such as Shaadi, Matrimony.com and Bharat Matrimony. Balaji Telefilms’ Altt (formerly ALTBalaji), audio platform Kuku FM, dating service Quack Quack, Truly Madly also disappeared from the Play Store.
The dispute is over Google imposing a fee of 11 per cent to 26 per cent on in-app payments after anti-competition body CCI ordered scrapping of an earlier system of charging 15 per cent to 30 per cent.
Google went ahead to remove the apps not paying the fee after the Supreme Court did not provide interim relief to companies behind these apps in their battle against the search giant’s platform fees.
While Bharat Matrimony founder Murugavel Janakiraman described the move as “dark day” for the Internet in India, Kuku FM co-founder Vinod Kumar Meena in a statement said that Google was behaving like a ‘monopoly’. Quack Quack founder Ravi Mittal said the company would comply with rules to get back on the marketplace.
Google previously sent notices of Play Store violations to Matrimony.com, which runs the app BharatMatrimony, and Info Edge, which runs a similar app, Jeevansathi.
Info Edge founder Sanjeev Bikhchandani said it had cleared all pending Google invoices in a timely manner and was compliant with its policies. “Indian companies will comply – for now. But what India needs is an App Store/ Play Store that is a part of Digital Public Infrastructure – like UPI and ONDC. The response needs to be strategic,” he said in a post on X tagging Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal and his office.
IAMAI, an industry association that represents some of the largest Indian startups as well as international firms, said in a statement that it has advised Google—a member of IAMAI—to not delist any apps from Google Play. The industry body said it is able to confirm that Google had sent notices to at least four of the group’s members.
In a blog post, Google said 10 Indian companies had chosen for an extended period of time not to pay for the “immense value they receive on Google Play”.
“For years, no court or regulator has denied Google Play’s right to charge,” it said, adding that the Supreme Court on February 9 also “refused to interfere” with its right to do so.
Google asserted that allowing a small group of developers to get differential treatment from the vast majority of developers who are paying their fair share creates an uneven playing field putting all other apps and games at a competitive disadvantage.
“After giving these developers more than three years to prepare, including three weeks after the Supreme Court’s order, we are taking necessary steps to ensure our policies are applied consistently across the ecosystem, as we do for any form of policy violation globally,” Google said.
It went on to say that enforcement of the policy, when necessary, can include removal of non-compliant apps from Google Play.