Google Faces Up To $5 Billion Fine From Competition Commission of India

An anonymous reader writes "Google is facing investigation by the Competition Commission of India and potentially faces fines up to 10% of its three-year average turnover. While Google has settled anti-trust cases in the U.S. and the European Union, India's competition regime does not have provisions for settlement process." From the Times of India article linked: "The complaint against Google, also one of the world's most valued company, was first filed by advocacy group CUTS International way back in late 2011. Later, matrimonial website matrimony.com also filed a complaint. Referring to Google's settlement with the European Commission, matrimony.com counsel Ferida Satarawala said: 'Google's unfair use of trademarks as well as its retaliatory conduct are not specifically addressed in the European settlement and are distinct theories of harm being pursued by the CCI. Therefore, this settlement is unlikely to address CCI's concerns in our case.'"

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Theft

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like theft to me.

Google has lots of money, let's fine Google.

I still can't figure out what they did

[Overzeetop]

I read the entire fine article, and I'm still at a loss. What was the specific harm which the Indian government is trying to correct?

Re:I still can't figure out what they did

[Brett Buck]

The harm that Google has $5 billion that they want.

Re:I still can't figure out what they did

[tomhath]

It's not the Indian government. The complaint was filed by an organization called CUTS, whose mission is:

Pursuing economic equity and social justice within and across borders by persuading governments and empowering people

In other words, their goal is wealth transfer from rich to poor countries. Whether Google did anything wrong isn't the point; they're trying to use the Indian government to get some of Google's money.

Re:I still can't figure out what they did

[ShieldW0lf]

My first thought is that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is behind this. Wouldn't be the first time they've corrupted the Indian government. Anyone remember not that long ago when they were going to allow their indigenous pharmaceutical companies to start manufacturing and selling drugs to their massive population for cost, before Bill swept in with funding to pay for drugs for the upper and middle classes in exchange for leaving the law as it was? It was covered here on Slashdot.

Re:Pull out

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets see how long it takes for the Indiana government's mind to change.

Totally man. Screw those Hoosiers!

Re:yeah right

[davester666]

"India's competition regime does not have provisions for settlement process"

more like
"India's competition regime does not have provisions for settlement process written into the law"

There does seem to be a private method for making agreements between companies and gov't officials that is the accepted practice in India.

Re:Pull out

[Overzeetop]

Isn't this what got them in trouble - removing Indian companies who notified Google that they were violating their IP?

They could switch to opt-in only via robots, and just put a notice in the search indicating that the company has not authorized them to display particular search results, but apparently that's not good enough either : http://news.slashdot.org/story...

If it isn't Indiatimes.com

[conscarcdr]

One of the worst spamming sites there is. I've received their junk "newsletters" despite never visited it before.

Re:Indian Hypocrisy

[mmell]

Just to get the cart back behind the horse - let's see if the Indian judicial system can work this out correctly. There seems to be an assumption here that India's judicial system is little better than a star-chamber mechanism dispensing kangaroo-court justice. While I'll admit there may be strong political and financial incentives for an Indian court to arbitrarily find Google liable, there's no reason to believe that the Indian courts will fail to correctly perform their function of interpreting and adjudicating Indian law.

Re:Indian Hypocrisy

[superwiz]

It's simple: if you want to operate in India, you must follow Indian law. If you are not willing to do that, your company will be fined, just as it did in Europe.

Sure..if we are talking about laws regarding your operations in India. Any attempt to impose extra-territorial legal restrictions is always very questionable. Generally, there has to be a compelling humanitarian reason for legislating extra-territorial behavior (like outlawing human trafficking or sex tourism to countries with under-age prostitution) or an attempt to stop international criminal behavior (like drug-trafficking or maybe... maybe tax dodging). Improper application of IP laws (like patent laws)? If that were ok, then, as a poster above mentioned, US would go after bank accounts of any company producing generic versions of US drugs before they became off-patent in the US. Unless, of course, they want to claim that this is 10% of Google's operations in India, but I doubt Google does $50 billion worth of business in India.

Re:you obviously

[Bengie]

Google is less than 50% of all searches and the ONLY search company that spends its own dime to fight NSA requests. But I can tell that you're trolling, which means you have a very good chance of a mental disorder, so I can't hold that against you.

Re:yeah right

[BosstonesOwn]

Haven't gotten any of the scam calls that are from indian call centers requesting you install remote sessions for them to "assess your virus infections" yet have you ? These for some reason are still allowed to run there from the same scum trying to get cash out of google there.