Google Has To Allow Third-Party Stores by Law in India

Startups and other small businesses are cheering the new ruling by the Supreme Court. On Thursday, the court upheld an antitrust order. As per this order, Google has to change how it runs its Android system. The ruling opens the markets for rivals to come in and boost competition.

In October, the CCI (Competition Commission of India) ruled that Google has to make many changes. One of them is refraining from entering agreements that ensure its search services are exclusive. Another change is to remove the mandatory pre-installation of various apps. The ruling also stated that Google has to allow third-party app stores within their Play Store.

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While Google moved to block the antitrust directives from October, the Supreme Court declined this request on Thursday. Alphabet Inc said that the new directive would hurt their customers and would also stall the growth of their Android ecosystem. Google now has seven days to comply with these demands.

How Does this Google decision Benefit Customers?

The new ruling benefits customers in various ways. Since Google has to now allow third-party apps, customers can do something that wasn’t allowed by the Play Store in the past – pause an ongoing download. Customers only had the option to cancel an ongoing download. This would waste time, as large downloads would have to begin all over again. This also allows users to control the data that will be used when downloading outside Wi-Fi.

Who Does This Benefit?

This ruling benefits many small businesses. For example, Google Maps is pre-installed by default on all Android devices. This leaves very little scope for apps such as MapmyIndia to gain any market share. With the new ruling, Google cannot mandate the pre-installation of apps now. With over 97% of phones in India running on Android, this is a major relief for most startups to build their market share in the Android space.

Other companies that would benefit from this as those that run an app store similar to that of Google. Google does not allow any other play store to run on their OS. This will change now, and app stores from companies such as Indus OS can now hope that their store may find new customers.