The Supreme Court on Friday declined to entertain Google LLC’s plea seeking modification of its January 19 order and said the company can raise its grievances during the hearing of its appeal before the NCLAT.
A bench of Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justices PS Narasimha and JB Pardiwala said it can add “without prejudice” to the January 19 order and nothing more.
Senior advocate Maninder Singh, appearing for the US tech giant, said that certain portions of the January 19 order needed to be struck down.
The bench said that the order was recorded in open court and hence there is nothing to clarify or modify.
Advocate appearing on behalf of Competition Commission of India (CCI) appealed to Google has been listed for hearing next week National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) And they can raise these issues before the tribunal.
“Sorry, this cannot be done. We will not do that. You can raise all these grievances during the hearing of the appeal,” the bench told Singh.
On January 19, in a setback to Google, the top court had upheld the NCLAT order which had declined to grant an interim stay on imposition of a penalty of Rs. 1,337 crore on the US tech giant for allegedly abusing its dominant position by the competition regulator Android mobile device ecosystem.
The top court had said that at the interlocutory stage, it would be sufficient to say that the CCI’s findings against Google were neither outside jurisdiction nor suffered from any manifest error necessitating its intervention.
It had given the American firm a week’s time to deposit 10 per cent of Rs. The CCI imposed a fine of Rs 1,337 crore on it.
The apex court had asked the NCLAT to decide by March 31 this year after fixing the date for hearing Google’s appeal against the order of the competition regulator.
“It is sufficient to note that the findings arrived at by the CCI cannot be held to be at the negotiation stage, either without jurisdiction or suffering from a manifest error, thereby interfering with the negotiation stage will be required”, it was ordered.
Google had earlier moved the top court against the NCLAT’s January 4 order refusing to grant an interim stay on the competition regulator. There is a fine of 1,337 crores on this.
The NCLAT, however, accepted the search giant’s challenge to the penalty imposed by the CCI for misusing the dominant position of its Android smartphone operating system in the country and ordered the listing of its plea in April.
The US-headquartered company had said without prejudice during the hearing that it was ready to partially comply with the CCI order.
“These may be followed to the following extent – a. Google shall ensure separation of Chrome from Search, Chrome from Play only; In terms of the decision of the EC (European Commission) dated 18th July 2018, Google shall ensure that The apex court had said that search app pre-installation exclusivity on portfolio wise RSA alone would not be followed.
It was noted that the NCLAT had listed the appeal for final hearing and therefore did not hear the matter on merits.
Earlier, the CCI had said that the issue relating to alleged abuse of dominant position by Google in multiple markets in the Android mobile device ecosystem is of “national importance” and the world is watching how India is dealing with the matter.
The CCI had on October 20 last year asked Google to allow smartphone users on the Android platform to uninstall applications and let them choose the search engine of their choice.
This order was to be effective from January 19.
On October 20 last year, the CCI had ordered the internet major to cease and desist various unfair business practices apart from imposing a hefty fine on Google.
The regulator, which passed the order after directing a detailed probe more than three years ago, has also asked Google to modify its conduct within a specified time frame.
The CCI, which began probing the matter in April 2019, directed that original equipment manufacturers should not be prevented from choosing to pre-install applications owned by Google and that they should be allowed to install the bouquet of applications on their devices. Don’t be forced to pre-install. smart device.