Google removes marriage app in India amid monopoly dispute

The technology giant Google removed an Indian marriage application from its digital store, in the midst of a legal dispute with several companies fighting over the fees that developers have to pay to the multinational to market their products.

More than one hundred applications from the Indian company Matrimony.com, designed to arrange couples, were removed from the virtual store of GooglePlay Store, said in a statement this Saturday the founder and executive director of the app development company, Murugavel Janakiraman.

”Google “It eliminated what we built in more than 20 years with a single action,” said Janakiraman in the public text addressed to the Indian Ministry of Technology and in which he refers to this as “a dark day for digital companies.”

The action of Googleannounced yesterday, responds to the claim by the American multinational to several Indian companies for non-payment of the fee imposed by its virtual store to market its applications.

This is a judicial dispute that began last year when Janakiraman’s company requested a protective measure on the payment of fees, which it maintains are “exploitative” and squeeze digital companies, forced to pay for the internet monopoly.

The first hearing of the Supreme Court of Justice of India for the case is scheduled for March 19, a process that could change the economics of digital infrastructure in this country if the highest court were to issue a decision in favor of the emerging companies.

Google has “forced digital service apps to use their billing system and pay 15% or 308% of revenue, compared to less than 2% of what other payment platforms charge,” Janakiraman said.

In his latest announcement regarding Google He assured that he would take action against developers who refuse to pay their fees, offering them an ultimatum with three options to adhere to.

One of them is that they pay up to 30% through Google’s billing payment system; that they paid between 11% and 26% for using third-party payment gateways, or that they did not charge users through their store.

”If you do not accept any of the above, your application will be removed,” Google told developers according to the founder of Matrimony.com.

Google In a statement published yesterday, it assured that it would take action against the few who have protested the rates, since more than 200,000 applications accept its payment policy.

“Does anyone have another option?” asked Janakiraman, who has denounced on several occasions the monopoly of large platforms that control the network, and who assures that applications spend between 20% and 50% of their income on Google.