One of the sharks of the popular business reality show “Shark Tank India” remarked on Google over “Google Tax”. Anupam Mittal, CEO of Shaddi.com called Google a “Digital East India Company” after hearing about Google Tax. According to the reports, Mr. Mittal has compared the company’s practices to those of the historical East India Company, accusing the dominance of Google in the digital marketplace and calling it the modern form of colonialism. The founder of People Group recently gave an interview with CNBC, Anupam in which he again raised the perverse issue of “Google Tax” (a term given by himself). He stated that levies imposed on startups range between 20% to a staggering 50%.
During the interview, he stated that “Google Tax” is not solely for distribution but is also focused on protecting these new ventures’ brands from competitors. He stated, “This issue is quite big but Search Giant will try to make light of it because that is what monopolists usually do.” He further added, “The playbook is very simple, it is kind of like a dictator’s leadership where you first fight for the people, then you kind of usurp everything possible in your wake, and then you begin to work against the same people who made you what you are.” During the interview he talked more about the strategy adopted by Google, he stated that Google plans to charge money between 15% to 30% of revenue of any application downloaded from the Play Store.
This revenue is the addition to the substantial revenue that they already gathered through advertising, with Search Giant allegedly securing 20 to 50 % of most of the earnings of India’s digital firms due to their hold. He criticized the planning, plotting or tactics of Google and stated that it is easy to understand how the firm usually manipulates search results to view the brands of the competitors when netizens for particular companies, directing this existence to bid against their brands for visibility. The CEO of Shaddi.com also shows his concerns about the new move of Google, UCB (Users Choice Billing) or the Google Play Billing System (GPB), citing that the changes look cosmetic and a try to attack legal scrutiny.
He states that, in the process of these changes, the applications that users downloaded from the Play Store may face additional charges starting from 11 to 29% of their revenue, that are based on services and categories used. According to Mittal, this new tactic of Google is a try by the Search/Tech giant to force app developers to use their services and this approach is an unfair advantage by implying fees that are quite higher than the real cost of the service they are providing. Numerous startups are already paying anywhere between 20 per cent to 50 per cent in the form of Google Tax to get protection as well as distribution of their brand from the hands of bidders. Mr. Mittal also posted his remarks on X, “Many startups pay anywhere between 20-50% as Google Tax to get distribution & protect their brand from bidders. It is the new concept of modern colonialism or “The Digital East India Company”.”
