Google has been at the hub of several controversies most of which centers around monopoly. The internet giant’s behavior with its Play Store is also another aspect of several lawsuits. Google announced that in order to comply with the “Telecom Business Law”, it will allow users to use third-party payment methods. However, at this stage, the cost of users using third-party payment is only 4% lesser. This situation shows that Google will charge high fees no matter which way.
At present, when using in-app Google Pay to make payments, Google’s commission fees are between 30% and 10%. Google told developers that when using third-party payment methods, the commissions reduce to between 26% and 6%. This means that the reduction is 4% on both the upper and lower ends.
However, there are some oppositions to this policy. According to Google’s above statement, Google will charge a fee regardless of the payment method used. Content providers said that considering the additional fees required by third-party payment platforms, a difference of 4% is basically equivalent to no difference.
South Korean Democratic Party legislator Jo Seoung-lae pointed out: “Google pretends to give developers and users more choices, but it has not made any changes in high expenditures”. The Korean Communications Commission also stated that they will continue to monitor Google’s charging policy.
Gizchina News of the week
Google fined 2 million rubles in Russia
Yesterday, a Moscow court imposed a fine of 2 million rubles (approximately $28,085) on Google. This fine is coming because the company did not delete content deemed illegal by Russia. In fact, this is only part of a wider dispute between Russia and Google. As early as the end of 2018, Russia imposed a fine of 500,000 rubles (approximately $7,530) on the company for failing to remove specific items from its search results as required by law.
Since then, the internet giant has been fined several times in Russia. In the middle of last month, Russia’s communications regulatory agency, Roskomnadzor, stated that the company has not paid a fine of 32.5 million rubles (approximately $458,100). To this end, Roskomnadzor also stated that it is expected to issue a huge fine soon. Roskomnadzor stated that it will seek to impose a fine of 5% to 20% of its annual Russian revenue. This could be up to $240 million. The reason is that the American manufacturer has repeatedly failed to delete content deemed illegal. This will be the strongest punishment Russia has imposed on foreign technology companies so far. Google recently announced that it had paid Russia a fine of more than 32 million rubles (approximately $458,100).