India’s antitrust watchdog has agreed to Google’s request to maintain confidential some info the corporate offered throughout an investigation into its enterprise, although the regulator denied allegations it leaked a report on the probe to the media, a choose mentioned on Monday.
Alphabet’s Google sued the Competition Commission of India (CCI) at a New Delhi court docket final week, urging a choose to direct the watchdog to forestall leaks of knowledge.
The submitting got here after The Times of India and Reuters reported this month, citing a confidential CCI report, that the regulator’s probe had discovered that the US tech big abused the dominant place of its Android working system in India, unfairly utilizing its “huge financial muscle” to harm opponents.
Google, in its 188-page court docket submitting seen by Reuters, mentioned it was aggrieved by the CCI’s rejection of its request, made earlier than the media reviews, that “highly business sensitive information” it had offered to the regulator throughout the course of the investigation be saved confidential.
On Monday, Justice Rekha Palli mentioned the CCI had agreed to just accept Google’s request to maintain its submissions confidential, with out elaborating on the main points of the settlement between the watchdog and the corporate.
If Google “still has a grievance that any information is being leaked”, it might probably search authorized recourse, Justice Palli added.
However the justice mentioned CCI had rejected as unfaithful Google’s allegations that it had leaked any info to the media.
Google and the CCI didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.
On Friday, in a close to hour-long showdown in court docket, Google had referred to as the CCI a “habitual offender” when it comes to leaking confidential info. The watchdog’s counsel repeatedly denied the allegations, and accused the US firm of irritating the investigative course of.
Google’s submitting to the court docket, reviewed by Reuters, mentioned the publication of the investigation report’s findings brought on “irreversible damage” to its repute.
The CCI ordered the competitors probe in 2019, saying Google appeared to have leveraged its dominance to scale back machine makers’ capacity to go for alternate variations of its cell working system, and to power them to pre-install Google apps.
Reuters reported on September 18, citing the confidential CCI report, that the watchdog had discovered the obligatory pre-installation of apps on Android units “amounts to imposition of unfair conditions on the device manufacturers” in violation of India’s competitors regulation.
© Thomson Reuters 2021
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