Google delisted 23 apps from Indian developers for not complying with its payment policy, impacting businesses relying on Android.
Google delisted at least 23 apps from nine Indian developers from its Play Store on Friday for not complying with its payments policy. These include all thirteen apps from Matrimony.com — such as Bharat Matrimony, Kerala Matrimony and Jodii — three apps from InfoEdge — Naukri.com, Naukri Recruiter, and 99Acres — People Interactive’s Shaadi.com, Alt Balaji’s streaming service ALTT, and streaming services aha and Stage.
Delisting them means that users of Android — the mobile operating system that accounts for almost 95% of India’s smartphone market — will not be able to search for and download these apps from Google’s official Play Store. Many of the affected apps do not even have apps for iOS.
In a blog post on Friday morning, Google had said that it could remove apps that do not comply with its payments policy and throughout the day, apps kept disappearing. In the post, the company said, “[F]or an extended period of time, 10 companies, including many well-established ones, have chosen to not pay for the immense value they receive on Google Play”.
But the founders who have been affected called it a “dark day for Indian internet”. “Unlike 20 years ago when government’s laws determined what is going to be on the internet, now two companies — Apple and Google — determine what people will have access to,” said Matrimony.com’s founder and CEO Murugavel Janakiraman.
TrulyMadly’s Snehil Khanor echoed Janakiraman. “It’s a dark day for Digital India Dream. These Big Techs have become the digital landlords of the digital ecosystem and want us to pay them ‘lagaan’ (rent). Hardly any business in India even makes 30% PAT, but they want to earn 30% of our revenue so they can keep getting bigger at expense of our demise.”
The impact on businesses is immense. Ravi Mittal, CEO and co-founder of QuackQuack, a dating app, said, “95% of our traffic is from Android. We get 25,000 downloads a day via Play Store. 90% of our revenue is going to take a hit. Many developers have no choice but to succumb to survive. Things might change if the CCI or the government intervene.”
At the heart of this tussle is the Google Play Billing System (GPBS) and Google’s payment policies for Android apps. It applies to sale of all digital goods and services sold via in-app billing system and initially required all developers to use only GPBS.
In the notice sent to the developers on Friday, which HT has seen, Google said that the app does not comply with the Payments policy as it “uses a non-Google Play billing system to accept payment for access to in-app features or services”.
On using GPBS, developers would have to pay Google 15% service fee for the first $1 million revenue earned by the developer and 30% of earning over $1 million. For “automatically renewing subscription products”, this service fee is 15%.
After blowback in India, including an adverse order from the Competition Commission of India in October 2022 that said this practice was anticompetitive, Google started allowing developers in India to offer alternative billing systems. Developers who chose to do so had their service to Google reduced by 4%.
To comply with the policy, Google has given developers three options: opt for GPBS, have an alternative billing system, or “operate on a consumption-only basis without paying a service fee”.
But app developers in India are not satisfied for two main reasons — first, despite opting for an alternative billing system, they were still obligated to pay Google an 11% or a 26% fee, which they say is unfair; and second, this, they argue, violates, the CCI’s order.