According to the Indian Newspaper Society, news publishers are not being paid a fair price for the material they create and distribute on digital platforms.
According to the Indian Newspaper Society (INS), the Competition Commission of India (CCI) has ordered a probe into an allegation of Google abusing its dominant position in its news referral and related advertisement service.
According to the INS, Alphabet Inc., Google LLC, Google India Private Limited, Google Ireland Limited, and Google Asia Pacific were abusing their market dominance in “news referral services” in the online news media industry, in violation of Section 4 of the Competition Act of 2002.
The newspaper organization also claimed that news publishers were not getting compensated fairly for the content they created and distributed on their digital platforms.
In a statement, the INS stated, “Several countries, like Australia, France, and Spain, have implemented legislation mandating digital corporations, including Google, to fairly compensate content producers for utilizing their material and search results.”
The Indian Express is part of the INS, which is made up of newspapers and digital news sites.
According to the INS, media companies are kept “in the dark” about the overall advertising money received by Google and what percentage of that revenue is really passed to media companies.
“The European Publishers Council also filed a competition complaint against Google, arguing that Google has obtained end-to-end control of the ad-tech value chain, thus abusing its dominant position,” the statement added.