Outlook English - Print Subscribers Copy Outlook English, 26 February 2018 | Page 56

G O OGL E
2010, when “rankings were pre-deter-
mined to trigger at the 1st, 4th or 10th
position on the SERP”. The CCI found
this to be in contravention of Section
4(2)(a)(i) of the Competition Act. The
watchdog found Google in violation of
the same clause when it came to display-
ing results pertaining to flights as it
dep­rived users of “additional choices”
and asked it to put a disclaimer on the
‘search flights’ option. And finally, the
CCI found the tech-giant in violation of
Sections 4 (2)(a)(i), 4(2)(c) and 4(2)(e)
for imposing “unfair conditions” on
publishers, which prevented them from
using services provided by competing
search engines on account of agree-
ments signed with Google.
C
UTS general secretary Pradeep
Mehta says he is “happy” with the
CCI order and that they would not
file an appeal in the case. One take-
away from the order, he says, is that
“consumer awareness is important”—the
consumer needs to be aware that there
are other search engines. Sources tell
Outlook that Matrimony.com may file an
appeal in the case. In the trademark case,
Matrimony.com (formerly Bharat
Matrimony) had alleged that the likes of
Shaadi.com could advertise by bidding
on keywords related to its trademark
name, Bharat Matrimony, allowing for
its results to come on top when someone
Googled Bharat Matrimony.
In the case of search results, Google
still allows for the bidding of keywords,
making paid results possible, which
had caused a contention involving
trademarks. Google’s algorithm has
been in a state of constant change since
2010, and digital marketers say both
organic and paid methods work to
trigger results. “With paid, you bid on a
keyword, which pushes organic down
and the paid page comes up. Otherwise,
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation:
making a page Google-friendly) can
help push it down over time, say over
three to six months,” says a digital
marketing consultant. There are two
ways to ensure you pop up on search
results: either you are relevant and
popular according to Google-compliant
techniques, or you pay for keywords—a
bid to “manipulate the rankings”, as
the consultant puts it.
The CCI did not find Google wanting
on that count. Legal experts and digital
56 OUTLOOK 26 February 2018
marketing experts Outlook spoke to
backed the CCI order, some saying it
would help democratise the space by
increased competition. “The order
tries to balance innovation and compe-
tition in the online search space, and
attempts to make sure the ordering of
results on SERP is based on objective
criteria, ensuring that the user gets the
most relevant results,” says Karan
Lahiri, advocate at the Supreme Court
of India. “On the trademark issue, the
CCI adopts a hands-off approach, while
also saying there is no unfair condition
that Google imposes when it allows
advertisers to bid on trademarked
terms. In fact, it is the lack of a condi-
tion that enables users to view a
broader range of ads and, according to
“The CCI order tries to
balance innovation and
competition in the online
search space, to ensure
the user gets the most
relevant results.”
KARAN LAHIRI
Advocate at the Supreme Court
the CCI, promotes competition.”
Manasa Venkataraman, research
associ­ate at the Takshashila Institution,
agrees, saying the order did take into
acc­ount Google’s measures to prevent
and rectify any trademark infringement.
Although the words Bharat and
Matrimony “may have been trademarked
together by Matrimony.com,” she says,
“Google was not wrong in ­
allowing
Matrimony.com’s rivals from using
minor variations by, say, bidding for
‘Bharat’ and ‘matrimony’ separately.”
Coming to the second count, the CCI
asked Google to put a disclaimer indi-
cating that its ‘search flights’ link
“placed at the bottom leads to Google’s
Flights page, and not the results aggre-
gated by any other third-party service
provider, so that users are not misled”.
In a recent newspaper article, Rahul
Matthan, partner at TriLegal, writes he
found nothing illegal with what Google
did on that account: “High marketshare
and dominance are no longer anti-trust
concerns. What is important is the con-
duct of a dominant market player and
whether it is using its dominance to sti-
fle innovation and/or competition.”