/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/RNWTSMS355NY3JOXALOD3HB5PU.jpg?fit=%2C&quality=89&ssl=1 "India court says Google can’t remove Disney app in fight over in-app charges")
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(1/2)A screen displays the logo and a ticker symbol of The Walt Disney Company on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., December 14, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/Photo archive
NEW DELHI/BENGALURU, July 18 (Reuters) – An Indian court said on Tuesday that Google (GOOGL.O) it can’t remove the Disney streaming service from its domestic app store and should receive a lower 4% fee for in-app purchases, a significant challenge to its payments business model.
Disney’s lawsuit is the latest and highest-profile challenge to Google’s policy of imposing an 11-26% “service fee” on in-app payments in India.
He announced that after an antitrust directive ruled against Google’s previous 15-30% fee and forced Google to allow third-party payments. The companies have argued that Google’s new service fee system is just a overcast version of your previous system.
Disney, which runs the popular streaming app Disney+ Hotstar in India, has challenged Google’s new billing system in a court in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. His lawyers argued that Google was threatening to remove the Hotstar app if it didn’t comply with the new payment system.
The court in a hearing Tuesday said Disney should now pay a 4% service fee to Google and said the streaming app should not be removed from Google’s app store.
Further details of the order or the rationale for the decision are unknown, as the written order has not been made public.
Google did not respond to a request for comment.
The new service fee system, it says, supports investments in the Google Play app store and the Android mobile operating system, ensuring it gets distributed for free and covers developer tools and analytics services.
In October, India’s competition watchdog fined Google $113 million and said it must allow the use of third-party billing and stop forcing developers to use their in-app payment.
The agency in May started an investigation at Google after some companies claimed that the service fee it charges for in-app payments violates last year’s directive.
Reporting by Arpan Chaturvedi in New Delhi, Munsif Vengattil and Indranil Sarkar in Bengaluru; Edited by Savio D’Souza, Nivedita Bhattacharjee, and Conor Humphries
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