Indonesia’s antitrust company KPPU fined Google 202.5 billion Rupiahs, equal to $12.6 million, on Wednesday for antitrust violation associated to its fee system providers for the Google Play Store.
The KPPU ordered the search large to stop the obligatory use of Google Play Billing within the Google Play Store. It additionally requested Google to let all builders take part within the User Choice Billing (UCB) program and provides them a minimal 5% service price low cost for a 12 months after the choice is finalized, in keeping with its assertion.
The antitrust watchdog launched an investigation into Google in 2022 for its market dominance — particularly, the corporate required Indonesian app builders to make use of Google Play Billing (GPB). The company discovered that the Google Pay Billing System had charged charges as much as 30%, larger than different fee methods.
The Google Play Store handles funds between builders and customers by way of the GPB System for in-app purchases. Google requires all purchases of digital services and products within the Google Play Store to undergo the Google Play Billing system. At the identical time, it prohibits different fee alternate options to Google Play Billing. The company stated that limiting the fee choices led to fewer app customers, decreased transactions and decrease income.
The company famous that the Google Play Store is the one app retailer pre-installed on all Android units, with a market share over 50%. As for the search engine market, Google held a market share of 95.16% within the Indonesian search market, and different serps akin to Bing, Yahoo!, DuckDuckGo, and Yandex held the remainder as of January 2024, in keeping with Statista.
Google plans to attraction the ruling.
“We strongly disagree with the KPPU’s resolution and can attraction. Our present practices foster a wholesome, aggressive Indonesian app ecosystem, providing a safe platform, world attain, and selection, together with consumer alternative billing — which permits alternate options to Google Play’s billing system,” a Google spokesperson, Danielle Cohen, stated in an e-mail assertion.
“Beyond our platform, we actively assist Indonesian builders by way of a complete suite of initiatives, together with Indie Games Accelerator, Play Academy, and Play x Unity, reflecting our deep funding of their success. We stay dedicated to complying with Indonesian regulation and can proceed collaborating with the KPPU and stakeholders all through the appeals course of,” she added.
The tech trade has been carefully watching a collection of authorized disputes involving Google being fined for breaching anti-competitive practices attributable to its misuse of dominant market energy in numerous international locations, together with Indonesia, India, South Korea, France, the EU and the U.S. Japan’s antitrust regulator is prone to decide that Google has breached Japan’s antitrust legal guidelines and can order the tech behemoth to stop its monopolistic behaviors, in keeping with Nikkei Asia.
