Matrimony, Info Edge seesaw as Google warns removing them from playstore

Shares of Matrimony.com and Info Edge (Naukri.com) were in focus Friday after a Reuters report said that global tech giant Google may remove their apps from the Google Playstore for not paying service fees of the platform. 

Matrimony.com's stock fell 2 per cent to the day's low of Rs 522 on the BSE after the news broke. Info Edge dropped 1.5 per cent. Both the stocks, however, pared losses to turn positive. At 1:40 pm, Matrimony was up 2 per cent, while Info Edge was just above the flatline. 

As per the media report, Google has warned of removing apps of ten companies in India, including of Matrimony.com and Info Edge, for failing to pay a service fee for the use of its playstore. It did not name the companies. 

Info Edge founder Sanjeev Bikhchandani, as per the Reuters report, said the company had received a notice from Google and was compliant with Play Store policies.

"The notice does not say we are being delisted, it says if you are non-compliant, you will be delisted. There are no pending invoices of Google with us. All have been paid in a timely manner," he reportedly said.

As per CNBC TV-18, Matrimony in a reply to the reports said it received the notice from Google and the legal team is reviewing it and exploring the next steps. "Google’s actions literally mean all the top matrimony services will be deleted," it said. 

Further, Google has reportedly deleted the match making app Jodii in policy action, which had more than 5 million downloads. Business Standard could not find the app on the playstore, at the time of publishing this report. 

Last year, Matrimony.com was already engaged in a legal battle with Google over a new in-app billing system.

In April 2023, the Madras High Court asked Google not to remove Matrimony.com’s app from Play Store, giving temporary relief to the matchmaking website. 

According to Matrimony.com, Google made the Play Billing System mandatory and sole option for payments for app developers, imposing a fee of 15-30 per cent depending upon the annual revenue of app developers.

The company approached the High Court against Google saying the US company’s payment policy violates the law and imposing 11-26 per cent fee on revenue will cause hardship and irreparable loss to all the App developers.