Mr. Umar Javeed and Ors. v. Google LLC and Anr.

Date of Order: 20/10/2022

Coram: Competition Commission of India
Ratio: The case has violated the provisions of Section 4 of the Act. Section 4 of the Act defines
the abuse of dominant position by enterprises. The case in question is assumed to be in violation
of 4(2)(a)(i), 4(2)(e) and 4(2)(c) of the Act of 2002.
Brief Facts: The present Information has been filed by Mr. Umar Javeed, Ms. Sukarma Thapar
and Mr. Aaqib Javeed (the, ‘Informants’) under Section 19(1)(a) of the Competition Act, 2002
(the, ‘Act’) against Google LLC and Google India Private Limited (collectively, ‘Opposite
Parties’/ ‘Google’), alleging inter alia abuse of dominant position by Google in the mobile
operating system related markets in contravention of the provisions of Section 4 of the Act. The
Informants are stated to be consumers of the Android based smartphones. The key allegations in
the information related mainly to two agreements, i.e., the Mobile Application Distribution
Agreement ('MADA'), and the Anti Fragmentation Agreement ('AFA'), which were entered into
by the OEMs of Android OS with Google. Under the AFA, OEMs were restricted from
developing and marketing the incompatible modified version of Android OS, Android forks, on
other devices, which is alleged to restrict access to potentially superior versions of Android OS.
AFA is a precondition to signing the MADA. It was further alleged that while signing the
MADA is optional, OEMs are required to pre-install Google's own applications in order to get
any part of Google Mobile Services ('GMS'), i.e., Google applications like Maps, Gmail and
Youtube, thereby hindering development of rival applications.
Court’s Analysis: It was held that the mandatory pre-installation of the entire GMS suite under
an agreement amounted to imposition of unfair conditions on the device manufacturers and,
thereby, in contravention of section 4(2)(a)(i) of the Act. In violation of clause 4(2), it also
amounted to exploiting Google's dominance in the Play Store to defend pertinent areas like
online general search (e). Thus, Google's actions would maintain its dominance in the online
search market while denying entry to the market to rival search apps, which is in violation of
section 4(2)(c). Google's Android holds 80 per cent of India's mobile operating system market.
Therefore, the Director General (DG) was directed to cause an investigation into the matter. For
using anti-competitive tactics in Indian markets, the Competition Commission of India fined
Google Rs. 1337.76 crore in October 2022.