The Supreme Court on Friday (August 8, 2025) admitted an appeal filed by Alphabet, the parent company of online search engine Google, against a judgment of the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) that partially upheld a Competition Commission of India (CCI) finding that the technology major abused its dominant position in Android device systems to indulge in anti-competitive practices.

A Bench headed by Justice P.S. Narasimha also admitted appeals filed by the Competition Commission of India and the Alliance Digital India Foundation, and listed the matter for hearing in November.

Google was investigated by the CCI in 2020 for unfair billing practices on Play Store services and for promoting its own payment app, Google Pay.

In 2022, the CCI concluded that Google had mandated the use of the Google Play Billing System (GPBS) for app purchases, while exempting its own apps such as YouTube. The regulator imposed a fine of ₹936.44 crore on the company.

The company law appellate tribunal, while upholding several of the CCI’s findings, reduced the penalty to ₹216.69 crore in a judgment delivered in March this year.

In May, the tribunal reintroduced two of the CCI’s directions, requiring Google to be transparent about its billing data policies and prohibiting the company from using such data to gain a competitive advantage.