The Supreme Court on Thursday affirmed a National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) order refusing interim relief to Google against a Competition Commission of India (CCI) directive to pay a penalty of ₹1,337.76 crore for "abuse of dominance" in the Android ecosystem.
A three-judge Bench led by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud, however, asked NCLAT to decide the tech giant's appeal against the CCI order by March 31, 2023.
On a request by Google, the court gave the company a week from today to comply with the CCI directives. The CCI had quantified the penalty levied on Google at the rate of 10% of its average turnover for financial years 2018-19, 2019-2020 and 2020-21.
Google had moved the apex court after NCLAT, in early January, refused to grant any interim relief while listing its appeal for detailed hearing in April. Google had wanted a stay of the CCI order.
Affirming the NCLAT decision, the court observed in its order that it would "suffice to note that findings in the CCI order cannot be held, at the interlocutory stage, to be either without jurisdiction or suffering from manifest error which would have necessitated interference".
The court desisted from making any comments on the merits of Google's case in order not to affect the pending appeal before the NCLAT. The court however referred to certain findings in the CCI order, including how "Google search is set as a default search service in Google’s own browser Chrome" and about the bundling strategy of Google which "helps further its dominance across markets and affects the contestability and vitality of competition in markets, such as search, web browsing, online advertising, etc".
"These findings cannot be regarded contrary to the weight of the record at the interlocutory stage," the court noted.
The court said it could have remitted the matter back to the NCLAT to consider the question of interim relief afresh, but that would have delayed the time schedule set out by the tribunal in the appeal hearing.
