Last week, as Epic Games, Facebook and Microsoft continued to express concerns about Apple's "monopoly" control over what a billion people can download on their iPhones, a similar story unfolded in India, the second largest Internet market. largest in the world, including a giant developer. and the operator of the only other major mobile app store.
Google on Friday he picked up Paytm, India's most valuable startup app, from the Play Store. The app returned to the store eight hours later, but the controversy and acrimony that Google has raised in the country will last for years.
ProWellTech reported Friday that Google has pulled Paytm app from its app store after a repeated pattern of violations of Google Play Store guidelines by the Indian company.
Paytm, which is locked in a battle against Google to win India's payments market, has been frustrated by Google's policies - which it claims gives Google an unfair advantage - for several past quarters on how the Android maker is limiting its own. marketing campaigns to acquire new users, sources familiar with the matter told ProWellTech.
Google's explanation to Paytm as to why it pulled the Indian company's app from its app store this week is the company's latest attempt to thwart the Noida-based company's ability to acquire new users. Paytm executives said.
In a blog post Paytm released on Sunday evening (India local time), the Indian firm claimed that Google disputed the company for providing customers with cashback and scratch cards for initiating transactions on UPI. a government-backed payment infrastructure in India that has become the most popular way for people to exchange money digitally in the country.
Paytm said they launched this new version of scratch cards that are related to cricket on 9/11. Users have collected these cricket themed stickers to send money to others or make transactions such as top up credit on their phone or pay for broadband or electricity. bill.
In a statement on Sunday evening, a Google spokesperson said that "offering cashback and coupons alone is not a violation of our Google Play gambling policies" and that Play Store policies are enforced and applied to all developers consistently ".
But it is probably far from consistent.
On September 18, Google told Paytm that it had withdrawn its app for not complying with the Play Store's "gambling policy" as it offered games with "loyalty points". Paytm said Google had not expressed any concerns about Paytm's new marketing campaign prior to its notice on Friday, in which it revealed that the Paytm app had been temporarily removed from the Play Store.
But Google itself is running a similar cricket-related campaign in India, Paytm claims. (Why cricket? Cricket is immensely popular in India and one of the largest cricket tournaments globally, the Indian Premier League, kicked off its final season on Saturday.)
The Google Play Store in India has long banned apps that promote gambling such as betting on sports events and Google raised concerns about Paytm's main app promoting Paytm First Games, a fantasy sports app run by Paytm, in the past.
Paytm executives said that PhonePe, a payment app owned by Walmart in India, it also promoted Dream11, the most popular fantasy sports app in the country, and managed to escape without any action.
Google also allows operators of fantasy sports apps, including Paytm, to advertise on Search in India.
Where is Google hypocritical? Fantasy games are not allowed in the Play Store. But they can advertise on Google search. Cc @vijayshekhar
At the top of the list is an app they banned today. pic.twitter.com/4USUD92kSc
- Nikhil Pahwa (@nixxin) 18 September 2020
"This is bullshit of a different degree," Paytm chief executive Vijay Shekhar Sharma said of Google's objection to Paytm offering cashback in a televised interview Friday. The removal of the Paytm app only happened because Paytm offered cricket-themed cashback, he said. "Google doesn't allow us to acquire new customers right now. That's all it is," he added.
Google's payments app, Google Pay, competes with Paytm in India. In fact, Google Pay is the largest payment app for peer-to-peer transactions between users in India and holds the largest market share in UPI.
Without identifying any names, Sharma, the manifesto of the Indian startup ecosystem, said that many founders in India have just accepted that it is Google that has the final say on any matter in India, and not the country's regulatory agencies.
For Google, which reaches more users than any other company in India and whose Android operating system controls 99% of the local smartphone market, this kind of accusation is exactly what it must avoid in the country. The Silicon Valley research and advertising giant has launched an allure offensive in India, including a recent commitment to invest $ 10 billion, more than any other American or Chinese tech company.
The timing for Google's parent company, Alphabet, couldn't be worse. Google is currently the subject of an antitrust complaint in India on charges of abusing its market position to unfairly promote its mobile payment app in the country; and in the US, Congress has intimidated it may pursue antitrust regulatory action against Alphabet and Apple over app store concerns.
In India, Google's moves could have a devastating impact on businesses and daily consumers.
Paytm is not just a payment app. It is also a fully licensed digital bank. And only eight hours of absence from the Play Store created panic among some of its users. A source familiar with the matter told ProWellTech that Paytm saw several people withdraw their fixed deposit at Paytm Payments Bank on Friday.
Anecdotally, ProWellTech has heard of instances where providers who previously preferred Paytm to accept money digitally were asking their customers to use a different payment method as they had heard Paytm was "banned" in India.
Sharma said that Google's monopoly on the Indian app ecosystem is of an unparalleled scope in other parts of the world.
"If paying someone and getting cashback is a gamble, the same rule should apply to everyone," Sharma said. "It is shameful that we are here at the height of an Internet revolution in India and we are being sanctioned by companies that are not regulated by the law of this country."
If this sentiment gains ground in India, it could create challenges for Google's future in the world's second largest internet market.
Meanwhile, the United States forces a Chinese company to sell shares to local companies to continue operations in the country. In a recent episode of the Dithering podcast, Ben Thompson warned that the Trump administration's move - which some have argued is a long-time duty against Chinese companies (as China has long prevented US companies from significantly operating in the largest Internet market in the world) - could encourage other open markets to do to American companies what it is doing to TikTok.
Several US technology executives share these concerns.
The problem with this TikTok deal is that the United States is the largest tech player globally. You can make this move once or twice, but we have a lot more to lose in the long run by setting a precedent like this.
- Aaron Levie (@levie) 20 September 2020
"I've said it before, but a ban on TikTok in the US would be pretty bad for Instagram, Facebook and the Internet more generally," Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri tweeted earlier this week. "If you are skeptical, keep in mind that most of the people who use Instagram are from outside the United States, as are most of our growth potential. The long-term costs of the moods of countries making inquiries. aggressive and prohibit us in the next decade outweigh the slowdown of a competitor today. "
India, which Google, Facebook, and many other tech giants consider their largest user market, has made several proposals over the past three years, including mandates that foreign companies store user payment information locally in India and companies help local law enforcement agencies identify the creator of questionable messages circulating on their platforms - which are widely seen as protectionist moves.
And India isn't even that open anymore. New Delhi has also banned more than 200 Chinese apps including TikTok, UC Browser, and PUBG Mobile citing cybersecurity concerns in recent months. India has not made public what these cybersecurity concerns are and acknowledged in its orders that users had expressed concerns.
Enough noise against a foreign company could be enough to deal with an avalanche of serious problems in India.