Google’s removal of apps from India’s Play Store ‘cannot be allowed’: IT minister Ashwini Vaishnau

Google’s decision to remove some apps in India from its app store “cannot be allowed”, IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnau said on Saturday, amid an ongoing row over service fee payments to the US firm.

Google on Friday removed many Indian apps from its Play Store, including Matrimony.com’s popular Bharat Matrimony and job search app Naukri, saying the companies were not following in-app payment guidelines.

Vaishnaw said he had held talks with Google and would meet the startups that needed protection in India.

“This cannot be allowed. This kind of delisting cannot be allowed,” he said in a statement.

Google declined to comment.

The removal drew criticism from many startups, which for years have protested and legally challenged many of the US giant’s practices, including its in-app fee. Google says the fees help develop and promote the Android ecosystem and the Play Store.

The dispute centers on efforts by some Indian startups to prevent Google from imposing an 11 percent to 26 percent fee on in-app payments after the country’s antitrust authorities ordered it not to enforce a previous charging system of 15 percent to 30 percent .

But Google was effectively given the green light to charge the fee or remove apps after two court rulings in January and February, one by the Supreme Court.

Google said on Friday that some Indian companies have chosen not to pay for the “tremendous value they get on Google Play”.

Among the worst affected by the removals is Matrimony.com, where more than 150 of its apps have been removed from the Play Store.

“All our apps have been removed and we are out of the Play Store and (that) means out of business,” founder Murugavel Janakiraman told Reuters on Saturday. “If this continues over the long term, then we will have a significant drop in revenue.”

Info Edge, another affected company, had taken down its job search app Naukri and another real estate search app. Many of the company’s apps have been restored, its founder told X on Saturday, without elaborating.

Google briefly removed popular Indian payments app Paytm from its Play Store in 2020, citing some policy violations. The move saw the company’s founder and the wider startup industry unite to challenge Google by launching their own app stores and filing lawsuits.

© Thomson Reuters 2024