Internet search giant Google is looking for “different solutions” to address the concerns of the country’s internet startups over the commission charged by the company on in-app digital subscriptions bought on its Play Store, the Economic Times mentioned in a report citing the company’s India head.
The American company is “working globally and locally to figure out those right solutions in the next few months,” as India is too diverse a country to have “one big mega solution” for the developer ecosystem, country head Sanjay Gupta told the financial daily on the sidelines of a company event.
Gupta said the Mountain View headquartered technology major is “very conscious of solving for India meaningfully and finding different solutions” for different kinds of developer ecosystems. “I am very confident that in the next few months, we should find a better solution.”
India’s internet startups such as Paytm and BharatMatrimony have been vehement in their opposition to Google’s Play Store policies and have demanded that it slash the fees and allow other payment mechanisms for customer subscriptions. They have claimed that the current fee structure levied by Google eats into the margins and impacts business revenue.
Last month, faced with mounting pressure from developers, the majority of which are in India, Google slashed the commission for in-app digital subscriptions to 15%, with effect from January 1, 2021. India is the largest market for Google in terms of users after the US and China.
Gupta said that while the reduced fees exempts 99% of developers, it still doesn’t address the issue for everyone.
“It’s a few people that we (still) need to solve for. And therefore, a sharper, directed approach (is needed) rather than one big mega solution,” Gupta said.
In recent years, scrutiny over BigTech companies such as Google, Apple and Facebook – which count India as one of their largest markets — has increased significantly. The Competition Commission of India ( CCI) is probing several allegations of monopolistic behaviour while the Centre has mooted the idea of an audit for algorithms deployed by the BigTech companies.
Gupta admitted that as the internet and technology become deeper in India, the “scrutiny” on companies like Google is going to be “bigger”.
“That’s the reality. That’s going to happen more in the future than now. We have been very responsible and committed to consumers as we develop our products and services,” he said. “We explain because technology is complex, and it is new and changing fast,” he added.
