Online fair play could brighten our e-future

While Google has eased our use of the internet enormously, with its search tool gaining the honour of being used in conversation as a generic verb, the US-based tech major’s command of all that it surveys—from the interface of smartphones to conduits of commerce—also seems to have shrunk the space open to competition online. Much of the anxiety aired over this has to do with its alleged exercise of clout to pre-empt rivals and squeeze dependent apps, which has caused severe heartburn among Indian startups. Some weeks ago, many of them arose in protest. And on Monday, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) initiated a probe of allegations that Google was abusing its dominance of some markets. A day later, we had reports of a letter written by the CCI to 17 Indian founders of startups with apps on Google Play Store, seeking their views on the nature of their partnership with it, in an effort to grasp the difficulties they might have faced, and also, among other things, the potential impact on India’s startup ecosystem if the company is indeed guilty.

The scope of domestic scrutiny that Google will be under is broad. It ranges from a 30% commission it proposes to charge on deals done via apps downloaded from its app store that use its billing system, which might cover most commercial Android apps, to its alleged tie-ups with hardware makers to pre-load its own payment app along with its