Technology: Google agrees to restore Indian apps on Play Store—for now

Virendra Pandit

New Delhi: Pending a decision by the antitrust body Competition Commission of India (CCI), search engine behemoth Google on Tuesday agreed to reinstate all the delisted apps of Indian startup companies on its Play Store after a government intervention got the two sides talking to resolve a dispute over service fee payments.

Union Minister for Telecom and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw, who brought Google and the affected startups to the negotiating table, said on Tuesday the US tech giant has been supporting India’s technology development journey, the media reported.

“Google and the startup community have met with us, (and) we have had very constructive discussions…Google has agreed to re-list all the apps,” he said.

Google had on Friday last week removed from its Play Store apps from a dozen Indian developers, including popular ones like Matrimony.com and job search app Naukri, for alleged noncompliance with its in-app payment guidelines.

With the government taking strong exception to the removal, calling it unacceptable, Google on Saturday restored some apps that agreed to comply with its guideline to pay a fee of 11-25 percent on in-app payments or do financial transactions outside of the app.

Vaishnaw and his deputy, Union Minister of State for Information and Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar, held multiple rounds of discussions with Google and the app owners on Monday to resolve the crisis that was being labeled as a ‘dark day’ for the Internet by some.

On Tuesday, Vaishnaw announced that Google agreed to restore the status of Friday morning i.e. pre-delisting.

“We believe Google and the startup community will be able to come to a long-term solution in coming months,” he said, indicating the two sides will now sit down and thrash out the issue of levy of service charge.

India is the world’s largest consumer internet market for tech giants like Meta and Google. And with Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government using its geopolitical clout effectively, they can’t afford to either ignore the Indian market or ride roughshod over it.

A day after Google delisted the apps, Vaishnaw revealed the government’s thinking, saying the removal was unacceptable and that the “startups will get the protection they need.”

At the center of the crisis was Google’s in-app fee. While the search engine said the fees help develop and promote the Android and Play Store ecosystem, startups said the tech giant was forcing them to use its payment system and pay a fee, failing which they were being offloaded by Play Store.

Indian app developers, affected by Google’s delisting action, had urged the government to intervene and help restore their apps on the Play Store to ensure business continuity. They argued that the search engine should wait for a final order from the CCI, where the matter is pending, before deciding on fee payments.

Antitrust body CCI had previously ordered Google not to mandatorily enforce an earlier system of charging 15-30 percent as fees. Google thereafter imposed a fee of 11-26 percent on in-app payments.

Last week, it removed the apps that weren’t paying the fee even after the Supreme Court declined to provide interim relief to the said Indian firms in their battle against the search giant’s platform fees.

While removing the apps, Google had on Friday stated that some Indian companies had chosen not to pay for the “immense value they receive on Google Play.”

Among the worst hit by the removals was Matrimony.com which saw more than 140 of its apps being dropped from Play Store. Other apps removed included Balaji Telefilms’ Altt (formerly ALTBalaji), audio platform Kuku FM, dating service Quack Quack, and Truly Madly.

Info Edge saw its job search app Naukri and real estate search app 99acres removed but they were back the next day when it moved to Google’s consumption model, where any payment made is done outside of the app.

Google briefly removed popular payments app Paytm from its Play Store in 2020 citing some policy violations. That led to a widespread industry outcry and startups joining hands to mount legal challenges against the tech giant. They even joined hands to launch their app store.