OVERVIEW:
As the world evolves, every economy is now making progress towards becoming a technology-driven economy and there is an ongoing debate to bring specific changes to the competition law for a technology-driven economy. The prevailing view, however, is that the existing Competition Act, 2002 (Competition Act) already reaches several technology-based claims, and major jurisdictions have stretched their competition statutes to cover platform conduct rather than wait for bespoke digital-market legislation. One such dispute arose in India in 2020, when the competition watchdog of India, i.e., Competition Commission of India (‘CCI’) began examining Google’s Play Store in-app payment policies, drawing on Epic Games, Inc. v. Apple Inc. in the United States of America. What began as a CCI investigation has since moved through the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal ("NCLAT") to the Supreme Court of India, while the European Union (EU) has moved from legislating the Digital Markets Act ("DMA") to actively fining Google under it. This Article traces that trajectory and asks whether India needs an ex-ante Digital Competition Act or can regulate platforms under its existing, ex-post framework.
INTRODUCTION
Digital markets have become indispensable to modern economic life. Technology companies such as Google and Apple have emerged as dominant intermediaries through their app stores, which give consumers access to millions of applications while dictating the terms on which developers may reach them. This concentration of power raises pointed questions of competition, market access, and platform regulation, particularly for Google’s Play Store, where the requirement that developers use Google’s proprietary billing system, coupled with commissions on certain transactions, has drawn sustained CCI scrutiny under the Competition Act.
That scrutiny cannot be examined in isolation. A useful comparative perspective emerges from Epic Games, Inc. v. Apple Inc 14, 493 F. Supp. 3d 817 (N.D. Cal. 2020) in the United States, which tested the same underlying question, whether a dominant app-store operator’s payment restrictions are anti-competitive, under a different statute and market.
This Article asks whether that reasoning can inform the assessment of Google’s practices in India, and whether the CCI can address them under the existing Competition Act, or whether, as in the EU, platform regulation ultimately requires purpose-built, ex-ante legislation. Consequently, this Article proceeds in four (4) parts.
It begins with the CCI’s order dealing with the Google Play Billing System and its appellate journey before the NCLAT and Supreme Court of India; turns to the Epic Games v. Apple (supra) litigation in the United States, focusing on the anti-steering finding under California’s Unfair Competition Law and its aftermath; then examines the EU’s shift from legislating the Digital Markets Act to enforcing it against Google; and closes with a critical analysis of whether India needs ex-ante platform regulation or can proceed through the Competition Act’s existing framework.
Google v. CCI: Origins, Findings, and Appellate Developments
The dispute between Google and the CCI is among the most significant attempts by Indian competition law to address market power in the digital economy and traces to information filed before the CCI in 2020, alleging that Google leveraged its dominance over the Android ecosystem, and in particular the Play Store, to the detriment of app developers. The information centered on two (@) practices:
- the mandatory use of the Google Play Billing System ("GPBS") for in-app purchases, and
- the bundling of Google’s proprietary applications as a condition for original equipment manufacturers to retain Play Store access.
Google defended its 15–30% service fee as fair consideration for the platform services and security sustaining the ecosystem, noting that over 97% of developers pay no fee.
- FINDINGS OF THE CCI
For the relevant market, the CCI relied on its own precedent in Umar Javeed v. Google LLC (CCI Case No. 39 of 2018), which had defined the market for app stores for Android operating systems, extending it here to payment processing for app and in-app purchases. By October 2022, CCI held Google liable for abuse of domination position under Sections 4(2)(a)(i) and 4(2)(e) of the Competition Act, imposing a penalty of ₹936.44 crores, then among the largest ever levied on a single entity. Beyond the penalty, the CCI also directed Google to delink GPBS from Play Store listing, to stop restricting developers from directing users to alternative payment options, a conceptual parallel to the later finding against Apple, and to maintain transparency in its use of billing data.
Two (2) findings underpinned the order, viz. first, developers had to route all in-app transactions through GPBS, attracting commissions of 15–30% with no option to use a competing billing system; non-compliance risked removal from the Play Store, a serious threat given Android’s roughly 96% market share in India and second, YouTube, i.e., Google’s own service, was not subject to the same commission structure, which the CCI treated as self-preferencing. These findings were mapped onto Section 3 of the Competition Act as anti-competitive agreements, i.e., an agreement causing an Appreciable Adverse Effect on Competition (AAEC), and Section 4 of the Act, as abuse of a dominant position through a "take it or leave it" condition on developers.
- The Appellate Battle: NCLAT and the Supreme Court
Google challenged the order before the NCLAT and, in parallel, the Supreme Court, seeking a stay of the directions requiring it to delink GPBS and permit alternative payment options. Both fora declined interim relief i.e., the NCLAT in January 2023 directed Google to deposit 10% of the penalty, compelling Google to begin implementing changes while the appeal remained pending.
The NCLAT delivered its judgment on 28 March 2025 in Alphabet Inc. & Ors. v. Competition Commission of India & Anr. (NCLAT Clarification Order, dated 01 May 2025), upholding the CCI’s core finding that Google’s mandatory GPBS requirement and self-preferencing of Google Pay amounted to abuse of dominance under Sections 4(2)(a)(i) and 4(2)(e) of the Act, and sustaining the directions permitting third-party billing and communication about alternative payment options. It reduced the penalty to ₹216.69 crore, holding that the CCI had erred by applying it to Google’s global rather than India-specific turnover (Re: Deccan Herald, March 29, 2025); set aside the market-access findings, noting GPBS accounted for under 1% of India’s UPI transactions; and, most significantly, struck down the CCI’s forward-looking, "gatekeeper"-style directions as exceeding the Commission’s powers under India’s ex-post framework, citing the Digital Competition Law Committee Report, 2024.
On 01 May 2025, the NCLAT clarified its order to reinstate two (2) directions omitted from its operative portion, firstly, requiring a transparent data policy for GPBS-derived data and barring its use to advantage Google’s own services and further rejecting Google’s objection that this was an impermissible review.
The matter now before the Supreme Court in case ALPHABET INC & Ors v. CCI. C.A. No. 9644 - / 2025, which in August 2025 admitted cross-appeals by Google, the CCI, and the Alliance of Digital India Foundation ("ADIF").
Google contests the abuse-of-dominance and data-transparency findings; the CCI seeks restoration of the full penalty and market-access findings; and ADIF argues the forward-looking directions are essential to protect digital competition. A bench of Justices P.S. Narasimha and Atul S. Chandurkar heard preliminary arguments in November 2025, and the appeal remains pending as of this writing. It is noteworthy that its outcome will settle whether a competition authority operating under an ex-post statute may impose preventive obligations on dominant platforms, or whether that requires the legislative mandate found in the EU’s Digital Markets Act.
The Epic Games Precedent (United States of America)
The Google dispute drew heavily on Epic Games, Inc. v. Apple Inc., decided by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The case arose from Epic’s 2020 "Project Liberty" hotfix, which covertly introduced a direct payment option into Fortnite in breach of Apple’s Developer Program Licence Agreement; Apple removed the app, and Epic sued, alleging that Apple’s control over iOS distribution and payments was anti-competitive. Following a Twenty-One (21) day bench trial beginning 03 May 2021, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers held, on 10 September 2021, in Epic Games, Inc. v. Apple Inc., that Epic had failed to prove Apple’s liability under the Sherman Act, but that Apple’s anti-steering provisions, i.e., barring developers from directing users to cheaper, external payment options had violated the unfair prong of California’s Unfair Competition Law ("UCL"). The court issued a permanent, nationwide injunction against those restrictions, while ordering Epic to pay Apple 30% of the revenue it had diverted.
- Determination of Relevant Product Market and Geographical Market.
On relevant market, the court rejected both parties’ formulations. Epic’s three-market approach and Apple’s single "digital game transactions" market were defining "digital mobile gaming transactions" as the relevant product market, with a global geographic market excluding China. This exercise has since been treated as a reference point by regulators assessing app-store conduct elsewhere, including India.
- The Anti-Steering Finding under California’s Unfair Competition Law
The anti-steering finding rested on the UCL, under which conduct may be "unfair" even without an antitrust violation. The court applied a balancing test weighing the injury to Fortnite’s players and to developers as quasi-consumers against Apple’s justifications, finding that its restrictions on informing consumers of cheaper alternatives caused cognizable economic harm without adequate justification. This narrower, conduct-specific route to liability, reached without any finding of monopoly power and this is what has made the anti-steering theory portable to other jurisdictions, including India.
The dispute has not remained static. In April 2025, Judge Gonzalez Rogers in Epic Games, INC. v. Apple INC. No IN 25-2935, found Apple in civil contempt for willfully evading the 2021 injunction, charging a 27% commission on external, linked-out purchases and imposing design restrictions discouraging their use and referred the matter for a possible criminal contempt investigation. The 9th Circuit Court unanimously affirmed the contempt finding on 11 December 2025, (Epic Games, Inc. v. Apple Inc., No. 25-2935, 2025 WL [decision])) and the Supreme Court, on 06 May 2026, (Apple Inc. v. Epic Games, Inc., No. 25A1213) declined to stay it, and confined to Apple’s actual, verifiable costs of facilitating external purchases. Apple currently charges none, a five-year escalation illustrating how contested the anti-steering principle remains even in its jurisdiction of origin.
The European Front: DMA Enforcement Against Google
Parallel to the Indian proceedings, the EU has pursued a more codified route to platform accountability. In 2018, the European Commission fined Google € 4.34 billion in Google and Alphabet v. Commission (Case T-604/18) for using Android to entrench its search dominance, through mandatory app bundling, exclusivity payments to manufacturers, and restrictions on forked Android versions. On 02 July 2026, the Court of Justice of the EU dismissed Google’s final appeal in Google and Alphabet Inc. v. European Commission (Case C-738/22 P), confirming a reduced fine of € 4.125 billion and endorsing the Commission’s broad approach to exclusionary abuse in digital markets.
That litigation was fought entirely under ex-post competition law. Since 2023, however, the EU has layered on the Digital Markets Act ("DMA"), an ex-ante rulebook designating large platforms as "gatekeepers" and imposing upfront obligations, rather than case-by-case findings of abuse, which are further enforceable by fines of up to 10% of global turnover, and 20% for repeat breaches. Google was designated a gatekeeper for Search, Android, Chrome, and Play in September 2023. On 23 July 2026, the Commission imposed its first DMA fine on Google: €890 million, split between € 460 million for self-referencing its own services i.e., shopping, hotels, transport, sports results that are within Search, and € 430 million for restricting Play Store developers from directing users to cheaper, alternative purchase channels. The Play Store component mirrors, almost exactly, the anti-steering conduct at issue in both the Epic Games litigation and the CCI’s GPBS order, though the EU reached it through pre-defined, statutory obligations rather than an abuse inquiry.
The contrast is instructive; where the NCLAT held that the CCI’s ex-post statute did not permit forward-looking, gatekeeper-style directions, the DMA supplies exactly that mandate i.e., obligations fixed in advance, breach of which triggers scaled penalties rather than a fresh finding of dominance and abuse.
Critical Analysis: Ex-Post vs. Ex-Ante Regulation
The NCLAT’s ruling crystallizes the central question facing Indian competition law: can Sections 3 and 4 of the Act, applied case-by-case as in Umar Javeed (supra) and the GPBS order (supra), adequately discipline dominant digital platforms, or does effective regulation require DMA-style ex-ante rules fixed in advance? The NCLAT’s answer that the CCI’s existing mandate does not stretch to gatekeeper-style directions leaves that gap unfilled unless Parliament legislates. India has moved, haltingly, toward such legislation. The Ministry of Corporate Affairs’ Digital Competition Law Committee recommended in 2024 that India adopt a standalone Digital Competition Act, modelled loosely on the DMA, to regulate "Systemically Significant Digital Enterprises" through ex-ante obligations on self-preferencing, anti-steering, and data use. The Bill has since stalled at the drafting stage. In its 37th Report presented on 10th August 2026, Parliament’s Standing Committee on Finance urged the government to finalize the Bill without delay, widen its scope to cloud services and virtual assistants, and build in safeguards against premature capture of Indian companies. It is understood today that the government has largely accepted such recommendations.
The case for ex-ante rules is that platform conduct evolves faster than litigation: the GPBS dispute alone has taken over five years from complaint to a still-pending Supreme Court appeal. The case against is institutional caution i.e., untested, forward-looking obligations risk over-deterrence and demand the granular market studies the DMA itself relies upon.
CONCLUSION
The Google Play Billing System dispute has travelled far since the 2020 information: through a ₹936.44 crore CCI order, a substantially reduced NCLAT penalty, and now a Supreme Court appeal asking whether Indian competition law can regulate platforms prospectively rather than only after the fact. The Epic Games litigation shows that even a conduct-specific, ex-post finding that has reached under a decades-old unfair-competition statute can generate half a decade of contested enforcement and unresolved commission-setting. The EU’s € 890 million DMA fine on Google, by contrast, shows what ex-ante enforcement looks like once the legislative scaffolding exists. For Indian stakeholders, the stakes are immediate rather than academic. App developers and startups, who are the intended beneficiaries of the CCI’s directions, need to track whether the Supreme Court preserves the data-transparency and anti-steering safeguards the NCLAT sustained, since their commercial billing arrangements with Google turn on that answer. Google, and other dominant platforms watching from the sidelines, need clarity on whether "gatekeeper"-style conditions can be read into Sections 3 and 4 of the Act, without fresh legislation, since an affirmance would expose comparable practices on other app stores, OEM agreements, and e-commerce marketplaces to similar scrutiny. For the CCI and the NCLAT themselves, the appeal will settle how much interpretive room exists to fashion structural, forward-looking remedies under the present Act, a question already surfacing in the Commission’s parallel proceedings against other digital intermediaries, and one that will shape how far Indian forums are willing to go in regulating platform conduct before Parliament acts.
The more immediate word on the subject, then, is doctrinal rather than legislative. If the Supreme Court upholds the CCI’s forward-looking directions, it will effectively read ex-ante gatekeeper regulation into the existing ex-post framework, reducing the urgency of a standalone Digital Competition Act and giving the CCI, the NCLAT, and other regulators a template they can invoke without waiting for Parliament. If it does not, the NCLAT’s narrower reading will stand, and the Digital Competition Bill, which is still pending, will remain the only route to the kind of pre-emptive obligations the EU already enforces. Either outcome will define the shape of Indian platform regulation for the next decade, and stakeholders across the digital economy would do well to prepare for both.
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