Madras High Court Dismisses 14 Petitions Against Google's New Billing System

The Madras High Court has dismissed 14 out of the 16 petitions filed by Indian startups against the new user-choice billing system of Google LLC. The court observed that the cases fall under the jurisdiction of the Competition Commission of India.

The startups included Bharat Matrimony, Shaadi.com, Unacademy, Kuku FM, TrulyMadly, QuackQuack, Aha, Stage, and Kutumb, among others. Similar petitions filed by Disney+ Hotstar and another app called Testbook are yet to be decided upon.

Previously, the high court had given interim relief to these startups by asking Google not to delist them from the Play Store for not complying with the service fees prescribed under the billing policy until the matter was decided upon. However, the startups were directed to pay gross commissions to the tech giant at a rate of 4% on the gross revenue generated in the month of June.

Google had argued before the High Court that these startups have a contract with Google Asia Pacific as their market provider, and hence, the Alphabet Inc. subsidiary cannot be an answerable party in the matter. The startups had contended that in their contract with Google, the tech giant had altered the terms by introducing new policies, and hence, the court should restrict such actions.

As per the user choice billing system, which is at the centre of the dispute, users are allowed to pay via different payment channels, but a service fee of 11–26% shall be charged. A service fee of 15–30% would be levied on the startups if they continued to use Google’s billing system.