US technology leader Google may find loopholes to sidestep a fine upheld by a bankruptcy appeals court, key executives at some Indian startups have said.

The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) had on Wednesday upheld a Rs 1,338-crore fine imposed by the Competition Commission of India (CCI) against Google.

The appellate tribunal had, however, set aside four directives issued by the anti-trust body, including one where CCI had asked Google to enable app developers to port their apps into different versions of the Android operating system for smartphones.

Experts also said they expected the search giant to appeal against the NCLAT ruling before the Supreme Court.

A spokesperson for Google said in a statement that the company was “reviewing the order” and evaluating its legal options.

“The battle is far from over as Google continues to violate the recent Supreme Court orders around ‘the Google tax’ using loopholes. Hopefully, this ruling will make them sit up and pay attention,” said Anupam Mittal, the founder and director of matrimonial matchmaker Shaadi.com.

Several startup executives told ET that the community will take steps, including pursuing all legal options, to curb the influence of Google on the Indian digital ecosystem.“We will continue the fight to protect the Digital India and startup ecosystem of India. We will do anything required to safeguard our startups and the digital ecosystem of India,” Snehil Khanor, the founder and chief executive of dating app TrulyMadly, told ET.

Khanor said some provisions, like side loading and allowing other app stores on Google Play Store, were struck down.

“It does reduce some of the positive impacts that the ecosystem could have benefited from,” he said.

Experts said the fact that NCLAT had set aside some of the CCI directives also vindicated Google’s stand that some of the measures laid down by the competition regulator in its October 2022 order were “unprecedented and drastic”.

“Google claimed before NCLAT that the directions issued by CCI were unprecedented, drastic, intrusive and unjustified measures, which went far beyond the measures needed to bring the alleged infringements to an end,” said Anupam Shukla, partner at law firm Pioneer Legal. “Google was able to successfully argue against some of these directions, and so, the NCLAT has set them aside.”

The US tech behemoth will have to, however, continue implementing the rest of the directives issued by the CCI, said GR Bhatia, partner at law firm Luthra and Luthra Law Offices India.

“NCLAT seems to have taken a balanced view by adopting an ‘effects analysis’ approach and has taken care of the interests of all the stakeholders,” Bhatia said.

(Graphics & illustrations by Rahul Awasthi)

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