KPPU Telisik Bisnis Google Memopoli Payment On The Play Store, Ended With 50 Percents Of Income

Google is threatened with a fine from the KPPU. (photo: ary Julyto/VOI)

JAKARTA - The Business Competition Supervisory Commission (KPPU) on Thursday, September 15 stated that it is investigating Google's unfair business practice potential for the use of exclusive payment services for the Google Play Store software distribution platform.

The move follows a similar investigation by antitrust regulators from other countries or globally involving Alphabet Inc's Google.

"KPPU suspects that Google has abused using its dominant position, conditional sales and discriminatory practices in the distribution of digital applications in Indonesia," said Director of Economics, Deputy for Studies and Advocacy, Mulyawan Ranamanggal in a statement, Thursday, September 15.

Initial investigations conducted by KPPU found that since June 1, application developers in Indonesia have been required to use Google's payment system, which costs 15% to 30%.

"The amount charged by Google Pay Collection is much higher than other services, which costs below 5% before applicable requirements," Mulyawan added.

According to him, if the application does not comply with this Google provision, then they are at risk of being removed from the Google Play Store.

KPPU said Google controls 93% of the market share in the country of 270 million people who have a rapidly growing digital economy.

Mulyawan said that the KPPU has been conducting research on initiatives related to Google for the past few months. The research is focused on Google policies that require the use of Google Pay Billing (GPB) in certain applications.

GPB is a method or purchase of digital products and services in the application aka in-app Purchases distributed on the Google Play Store. For the use of the GPB, Google charges the service or fee for the application at 15-30% of the purchase.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment on this KPPU allegation. But in another country where it faces similar investigations, the company argues that its service costs help keep Android free. In addition, it gives global tools developers and platforms to access billions of consumers worldwide.

Google has been fined more than 8 billion euros (Rp119.3 trillion) by the European Union in the last decade for anti-competitive practices related to price comparison services, Android mobile operating systems, and advertising services.

The European Union's high court also upheld a ruling last Wednesday that it violated competition rules and fined Google a record fine of 4.1 billion euros (IDR 61.2 trillion).

South Korea's telecommunications regulator also announced in August that it is planning an investigation into app store operators, including Google, for alleged violations of in-app payment laws.

Seoul passed a law last year dubbed the "anti-Google" law, which prohibits large app store operators from forcing software developers to use their payment systems, effectively stopping them from charging commissions for in-app purchases.

KPPU will conduct an investigation over the next 60 days and an official said that if Google is proven to have violated anti-monopoly laws, a maximum of 50% of the net profit earned during that period can be fined.