HC stays CCI order to impose Rs 1 crore fine on Google Inc

The Delhi High Court today stayed an order of the Competition Commission of India (CCI) imposing a penalty of Rs one crore on US-based Google Inc for allegedly failing to provide information in a probe into its alleged unfair trade practices in India.
A bench of Justice Vibhu Bakhru also issued a notice to the CCI on the plea of the internet major and asked the panel to file its counter affidavit within four weeks.
The court also restrained the CCI from disclosing the confidential information related to the Google Inc.
"Prima facie, we are of the view that whatever information the petitioner (Google Inc) considers confidential shall not be disclosed," it said.

However, the court, for the time being, did not stay the ongoing probe against Google Inc.
The court's direction came on a plea moved by Google Inc which has alleged the CCI has "wrongly" imposed a fine of Rs one crore on it and it was not heard before the order was passed by the panel.

Google has also said the order was a "complete abuse" of authority by the CCI.
However, the CCI opposed the claim of the internet major that it was not heard saying the panel had accorded a "through" hearing.
During the hearing, the court said "it is true that this (CCI) order contains something which is not correct."

The case before the CCI relates to the allegations that Google Inc has been abusing its "dominant position" in the internet search engine space.
It was also alleged that Google Inc provides a number of vertical search services like YouTube, Google News, Google Maps etc and in order to promote its vertical search services, it mixes many of vertical results into organic search results.
The effect of such manipulation of results was that Google's vertical search partners will appear predominantly when an internet user searches for some information irrespective of whether the search results are most popular or relevant, said the allegations before the CCI.