News Content: Google in trouble over alleged unfair revenue sharing; CCI orders third probe

Tech giant Google is in trouble again as the Competition Commission of India (CCI) has ordered a fresh detailed probe against it for alleged unfair revenue-sharing terms with respect to news content. The order came in a case filed by the News Broadcasters & Digital Association (NBDA). The CCI will be clubbing this case with two other ongoing cases against Google where the allegations are substantially the same.

The first case against Google was filed in January this year by the Digital News Publishers Association in which the CCI ordered a probe against Google. Later, another case was filed by the Indian Newspaper Society and the same was clubbed with the first case.

The CCI said in a release that its probe division Director General (DG) will submit a consolidated investigation report for all three cases.

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The News Broadcasters & Digital Association alleged in its complaint that its members are forced to provide their news content to Google to prioritise their web links in the Search Engine Result Page (SERP) of Google and Google free rides on the content without giving the content providers adequate compensation.

The NBDA also alleged that the search giant exploits the dependency of the members on Google for referral traffic to build services such as Google News, Google Discover and Google Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP).

The NBDA claimed that the revenue distributed by Google to news publishers doesn't compensate them for their real contribution to these platforms.

The complaint has been filed against Alphabet Inc, Google LLC, Google India Pvt Ltd, Google Ireland Ltd and Google Asia Pacific Pte Ltd. The association consists of national and regional private news and current affairs broadcasters and digital news media entities as its members.

(With agency inputs)