CCI Rules Commercial Relationship Between Google And Truecaller Does Not Imply Preferential Treatment

CCI Rules Commercial Relationship Between Google And Truecaller Does Not Imply Preferential Treatment

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) bench, consisting of Chairperson Ms. Ravneet Kaur and Members Mr. Anil Agrawal, Ms. Sweta Kakkad, and Mr. Deepak Anurag, determined that a mere commercial relationship between Google and Truecaller does not equate to preferential treatment.

The informant alleged that Google was giving exclusive access to Truecaller, allowing it to share users' private contact information while prohibiting other apps from doing the same. This, according to the informant, provided Truecaller with an unfair market advantage in the caller ID and spam protection app space, creating a de facto monopoly for Truecaller.

The informant cited Google’s Developer Policy, which prohibits the unauthorized disclosure of non-public contacts, and contrasted this with Truecaller’s privacy policy, which allows the sharing of such information. They further claimed that Google favored Truecaller through commercial arrangements, including cloud storage and ad services, and by preloading Truecaller on several leading Android smartphones, enabling it to upload user contacts upon activation.

The informant also accused Google of abusing its dominance as the Android platform vendor by violating Section 4(2)(b) of the Competition Act, limiting competition, and promoting Truecaller in violation of its own policies. They requested the CCI enforce a uniform policy application across all apps, ban Truecaller from making private contact information public, prevent Google from favoring Truecaller, and impose penalties on Google for allegedly creating a monopoly in the caller ID market. The informant further sought to temporarily block Truecaller from operating on the Play Store until the issue was resolved.

Google responded that its Play Store policies ban the unauthorized sharing of users' non-public contacts and that all apps must adhere to these rules. They contended that the informant misrepresented Truecaller’s privacy policies, which require user authorization to access contact information and do not permit the collection or sharing of user details without consent.

The CCI observed that the informant relied on a version of Truecaller’s app that was no longer available on the Play Store while making allegations of preferential treatment and policy violations. The Commission noted that the informant claimed Google provided certain Android APIs to Truecaller for accessing user contact data. However, Google asserted that these APIs are open-source and available to all developers, as evidenced by the presence of other similar apps on the Play Store.

Regarding the commercial relationship between Google and Truecaller, Google stated that there were no exclusivity provisions or contingency clauses in their arrangements. Therefore, the CCI concluded that a mere commercial relationship does not imply preferential treatment.

The Commission determined that users voluntarily provided contact details to Truecaller, and thus, the allegations of unauthorized publishing and preferential access by Google were unfounded. Consequently, the CCI found no prima facie case of violation of Section 4 by Google and decided to close the matter against Google.