New Delhi: The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has ordered a fresh probe against Google for alleged abuse of its dominant position in the online search advertising space.
The fair trade watchdog is already probing the Internet major for alleged anti-competitive business practices.
The latest order came on a complaint by one Vishal Gupta against Google Inc, Google Ireland and Google India alleging that Google Adwords accounts are extremely “opaque and not transparent.”
The Competition Comm-ission of India (CCI) also directed its director general (DG) to investigate the role, if any, of persons who were in charge of, and were responsible to the companies for the conduct of their businesses, after giving due opportunity of hearing to such persons.
The AdWords programme, which allows Google to sell keywords to advertisers and display them in the form of short ads online, is a big money spinner for the company.
In an order released today, the Commission said that “Google’s practices prima facie stem, to a large degree, from its undisputable dominance in the online search market.”
“Therefore, Google’s practices towards AdWords customers such as the RTS (remote technology support) firms in this case, need to be investigated,” the watchdog added.
The order dated April 15 was released on Tuesday.
In September 2012, the complainant’s group of companies had resolved to set up an RTS business and an Adwords account was opened and activated on January 2013.
The complainant had alleged that several remote tech support companies, including his firm, had been suspended from the Adwords programme to promote Google’s own activities in an unfair, discriminatory and uncompetitive manner.
According to the CCI, the investigation is required to determine the nature and extent of problems that prompted Goo-gle to take actions against the RTS industry and whether or not the termination of the Adwords account was legitimate.
The complainant had stated that the bidding process of Google Adw-ords is opaque.
According to the compl-aint, Google had a ‘user safety policy’ which is ext-remely vague and unc-lear, giving rise to abuse of dominance by the search major.
