This Article is written by our Editor, Puneet Kumar of National Law University, Jodhpur
Introduction
On 5th October 2020, a US House of Representatives board presented the report of a bipartisan examination concerning the working of Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook. The 449-page report required the enormous innovation organizations to be separated and for a hypothetical preclusion against future consolidations and acquisitions by the predominant stage.
These organizations have been on the radar of numerous nations for being enormous spenders and attempting to bulldoze rivalry by one or the other way, such as purchasing out their adversaries or pushing merchants to try not to work with their rivals. For instance, the US Congress needed to know from Apple on the off chance that it had, to advance an application that permits guardians to restrict screen time for kids, tossed out an adversary application on the affectation that it was undependable.
Dominant position of Tech Giants in India
As a feature of inspecting the rivalry on the web, the US House board from June 2019 tested Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook, and how they controlled the progression of information for themselves just as their opposition. It gathered 1.3 million archives, tuned in to secret declarations from a few representatives in these organizations, and addressed organization heads Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Tim Cook (Apple), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) and Sundar Pichai (Google) over the proof that recommended the organizations have misused, settled in and extended their control over advanced business sectors (Digital sector) in serious and oppressive ways. According to panel formed by US the companies have been acting as the gatekeeper to the market and are bullying other small companies that are trying to be a part of this market in this way, they don’t allow any other company to rise even a bit to give them competition. Many other severe allegations are also made against these Big Tech companies like the terms and conditions of these Big Tech companies allow them to access the personal data of their users which help them to run a 24*7 survey among the users that keep them well informed about the needs of the users and it works as the last step in eliminating the competition in market because no other company can have that sort of data while they are struggling for their recognition in the market.
The other factor that is also helping these Tech Giants in retaining their position on top is their slowly acquiring strategy for the adjacent sectors For example if we discuss Google, this company started as Search engine but slowly it started dominating other adjacent sectors as we can see now Android which is the software preinstalled by maximum number of companies in their Smartphones is owned to Google, this company also manufactures its own smartphones and they can also be found in production of few other adjacent products. We need to understand what is actually happening at this very stage cause these companies by analysing the data of their users are actually manipulating their users and the market and this manipulation caused by these big Tech Giants is the very reason why there is no strong competition of theirs in the market. Google has been held liable for manipulating the market various times:
In 2018, the CCI fined Google 1.36 billion rupees ($18.5 million) for “search bias,” but a company appeal against that is pending. The CCI last year also started probing Google for allegedly misusing its dominant position to reduce the ability of smartphone makers to opt for alternate versions of its Android system.[1]
In 2019 a case was filed against google in India by two Indian antitrust lawyers, Kshitiz Arya and Purushottam Anand. The lawyers alleged that goggle has been using its predominant situation in the commercial market, the maltreatment of its prevailing situation in the Android phones and keen TV market, and others.[2]
In 2019, Google was held liable of abuse of its predominant situation in the versatile Android market for forcing unreasonable conditions on gadget producers to keep them from utilizing other working frameworks.[3]
What role does competition commission plays in this scenario?
Competition Commission of India (CCI) is the finest way/method to ensuring that the ‘Common Man’ has a fair access to the broadest range of goods and services of the market at the most competitive prices.[4] The Competition Act, 2002, as amended by the Competition (Amendment) Act, 2007, stick to the belief in contemporary competition laws. The Act restricts against any sort of anti-competitive agreements, maltreatment of pre-dominant position by enterprises and regulates combinations (such as acquisition, acquiring of control, M&A, etc.), which causes or is liable to cause an appreciable adverse effect on competition within India.[5] The goals of the Act are tried to be accomplished through the Competition Commission of India, which has been setup by the Central Government with effect from 14th October 2003. CCI comprises of a Chairperson and 6 Members named by the Central Government.[6]
The competition commission of India holds the duty to ensure that no malpractice takes place in the market which could in any way harm the market in terms of promoting fair competition, right here in the present scenario the objective of CCI is defeated if CCI does not put the Tech Giants in check for their wrongful practice to not allow any other company rise up to their competition by using some unfair advantages,
Conclusion and Recommendation
Completion Commission of India acts as the Watchdog to our Competition acts and has a strict duty to punish anyone who uses wrongful means to compete in the market. In today’s time we do know that there are just a handful companies who dominating the entire digital market and eliminating their competition by using some unfair advantages that they have in order to retain their top position. The Competition act prohibits the use of dominant position by enterprises or any other anti-competitive agreements, Hence the ideology followed by these companies to dominate the market by eliminating their competition one way or the other is actually a crime in the eyes of the CCI and such crimes have not been ignored by CCI but the thing that actually is to be taken in to account is even after getting so many warning and fine from various governments across the globe, how re these companies functioning the same as they use to and what can be possibly done to break their dominance and promote fair Competition.
On looking at the Tech Giants one can come to a firm conclusion that these big companies are not at the top position just because of their basic structure but because of the various sectors that they acquired alongside and which actually helped them build their empire of dominance. In my opinion if one actually needs to solve this problem, they should break down these companies into smaller companies making different companies for each different program they are running in this way they won’t be able to enjoy the fruits of two distinct businesses under the same cover and this will eventually give a fair opportunity to various other companies in the market to provide the services which they were unable to provide cause of the Giant Tech’s dominant nature.
[1] Reuters, “Google faces new antitrust case in India over abuse in smart TVs market, sources say”, The Hindu (last visited 18 May 2021) https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/google-faces-new-antitrust-case-in-india-over-abuse-in-smart-tvs-market-sources-say/article32794752.ece [2] id. [3] Aashish Aryan, “The US sues Google in biggest anti-trust case: What it means for India”, The Indian Express (last visited 18 May 2021) https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/us-sues-google-what-it-means-6825475/ [4] Competition Commission of India, The Competition Act, 2002, (last visited 18 May 2021) https://www.cci.gov.in/about-cci [5] id. [6] id.
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