Google Says India Anti-Trust Ruling Could Cause 'Irreparable Harm' and Reputational Loss to the Company (reuters.com)

Google has said an Indian antitrust ruling that found it was guilty of search bias could cause "irreparable" harm and reputational loss to the company, Reuters reported Thursday, citing a legal document. From the report: The Competition Commission of India (CCI) in February fined Google $20 million for abusing its position in online web search and also slammed the company for preventing its partners from using competing search services. After the ruling, Google had said the verdict raised only "narrow concerns," but in its plea challenging the CCI's ruling the search giant signaled the impact could be far greater. The order, the company said, "requires Google to change the way it conducts business in India on a lasting basis and the way it designs its search results page in India," according to a copy of its plea which was seen exclusively by Reuters. The CCI, among other things, had ordered Google to stop imposing restrictions on its direct search agreements with other publishers.

Comments

Market share...

[Freischutz]

Turn off all google services for india. wait a few weeks and when the citizens complain enough to their politicians they will likely beg google to come back under the current system.

Or competitors will move in gobble up Googles market share when Google goes back to California to sulk and then lobby for Google not to be let back on the market. After a while with a number of competitors, some of them probably local, who cater to the Indian market better than Google can nobody will miss Google. This is probably what Google is afraid of too because this is also one of the biggest reason why Google has trouble penetrating the few bastions of resistance like Russia where a local competitor (Yandex) simply does a better job. Google is a company that gained a dominant market share here in the west and many other places like India (where their search market share hovers between 95 and 100%) thanks to a set of fortuitous circumstances and it knows that losing market share is an awful lot easier than clawing it back. So I think it is pretty unlikely that Google will ever voluntarily exclude themselves from a market and leave their 95% plus market share to the competition since a 95% market share constitutes every businessman's nirvana, a monopoly, and Google ain't letting go of that without a fight.

Re:simple solution

[Aighearach]

If a company's freedom would require "extortion," that tells the whole story right there.

You seem to think that India has some sort of Right to have foreign companies provide services there, even if the Indian Government doesn't like the services. But both sides of that might be bullshit; the company has to continually agree to provide the service, withdrawing it would never be "extortion" because they're not withholding something that belongs to somebody else or that somebody has a right to. And if their Government claims that the service isn't legal there as provided, then the most obvious, natural, and neutral answer is to simply not offer the service in that place.

Maybe India is making a wise choice, but still, the obvious answer for Google is to withdraw the service because India isn't as important as China and if you alter your service for small fish, then every country is going to completely run your business; and in conflicting ways.

Re: Irreparable harm to Google?

[bill_mcgonigle]

If it is irreparable harm, they should exit India and move on. If they're lying they will bargain and stay.