India’s anti-trust body fines Google Rs 936 crore in second penalty; WhatsApp faces longest outage
Credit: Giphy
Also in this letter:
■ WhatsApp faces longest-ever outage, faces flak on Twitter
■ A look at the ETSA nominees and jury members
■ Key Meta investor asks Zuckerburg to cut costs
Google fined Rs 936 crore in second antitrust penalty
Alphabet Inc’s Google was fined Rs 936 crore on Tuesday as the Competition Commission of India (CCI) concluded yet another antitrust probe this month, finding the US tech firm guilty of abusing its dominant market position to promote its payments app and in-app payment system.
CCI directed Google to “not restrict app developers from using any third party billing/payment processing services”.
The ruling: In a release, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) said it has also directed Google to modify its conduct within a defined timeline. This is the second major CCI ruling against Google in less than a week.
In last week’s order, the regulator had said the makers of devices that run on Android shouldn’t be forced to pre-install Google services on their devices. It also asked Google to provide fair access to all stakeholders.
Heightened scrutiny: The Rs 1,337.76-crore penalty and Rs 936 crore fine on Google, and a Rs 392-crore fine on travel and hospitality sites MakeMyTrip, GoIbibo, and Oyo, are the latest moves in the CCI’s crackdown on anti-competitive practices in the tech sector.
These decisions have come in the run-up to the CCI setting up a dedicated Digital Markets and Data Unit (DMDU).
What’s DMDU? The anti-trust watchdog is in the process of setting up a dedicated Digital Markets and Data Unit to expand its capabilities to study potentially anti-competitive behaviour by tech companies.
“In addition to our staff from the law, economics, and finance streams, we plan to staff the unit with new professional profiles such as data scientists, algorithm experts, etc,” CCI Chairman Ashok Kumar Gupta had told us.
WhatsApp suffers longest-ever outage, Meta apologises
In what is being considered its longest-ever outage, services of the Meta-owned social messaging platform WhatsApp were disrupted on Tuesday across several nations, including the UK, the US, and other parts of Europe.
The outage lasted well over an hour and impacted millions of people before the services were restored.
What happened? The outage came to light after 12:30 pm IST when the world’s most popular social messaging app stopped working and users complained about not being able to receive or send messages in text and video format.
According to Downdetector, a platform that tracks websites, more than 27,000 users reported the WhatsApp outage. While 69% faced problems with sending messages, 24% had troubles with their server connection and 7% had issues with the overall app.
Meta apologises: Meta Platforms Inc issued an official apology for the outage faced by billions of people using its messaging service.
“We know people had trouble sending messages on WhatsApp today. We’ve fixed the issue and apologise for any inconvenience,” a Meta spokesperson told the news agency AFP.
During the outage, WhatsApp and Meta became the butt of jokes and memes as they began trending on Twitter — the go-to platform during such outages.
Rise in alternative apps: According to information compiled by Digital Funnel, a digital marketing company, global searches for “WhatsApp Alternative” increased by 2,400% from 8 am when users first began to notice the outage.
Messaging app Signal saw a 138.09% jump in searches from 8 am, while privacy-focused messenger Threema exploded with a 400% jump in searches after the WhatsApp outage, according to Digital Funnel.
ET Startup Awards 2022: A look at all the nominations and jury members
The ET Startup Awards (ETSA) are now in their eighth year and we are happy to report that we have begun the hunt for the brightest stars in India’s startup world for the 2022 edition.
Last Friday, we first revealed our high-powered jury of achievers, led by Salil Parekh, chief executive and managing director of Infosys, who will pick the winners of this year’s awards on October 28, marking the launch of India’s most coveted recognition of entrepreneurial excellence.
Nominations out! We also announced nominations for the five categories in this year’s ETSA, namely Bootstrap Champ, Top Innovator, Comeback Kid (all on Friday), Social Enterprise and Best on Campus (on Monday).
Some of our jury members have also spoken about their views and expectations from the contenders for the top prize.
Juryspeak on the recipe for success: Sanjeev Bikhchandani and Arundhati Bhattacharya said growth at all costs is very 2020 and the startup world has been forced to move on. What matters today is good unit economics, sustainability, and a path to profitability.
Shailendra Singh, Sriharhsa Majety and Sahil Barua said a startup that has a resilient business model, built with an extremely long-term mindset that will see it become a corporate giant in the next decade or so, will be a clear winner.
Meta can get its “mojo back”, says Brad Gerstner, but it will have to take some hard decisions first . Those decisions include slashing expenditure and reducing headcount, the CEO of Altimeter Capital told Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg in an open letter. Altimeter Capital owns about 2.46 million Meta shares.
In his letter, Gerstner asked Meta to cap its expenditure on the metaverse to $5 billion a year from the current announced investment of $10-15 billion. He also asked Zuckerberg to cut down on capex and employee expenses.
Clear the air: Gerstner pointed out that Meta’s investments in the metaverse have led to confusion among people and changing the company’s name from Facebook to Meta only added to it.
“Perhaps it was the renaming of the company to Meta that caused the world to conclude that you were spending 100% of your time on Reality Labs instead of AI or the core business. Whatever the reason, that is certainly the perception,” his letter read.
Reduce headcount, cut capex: In his other suggestions, Gerstner asked Meta to cut headcount expenditure by 20%, adding that companies such as Twitter, Uber, and Google have been able to generate similar levels of revenue with fewer people.
“I would take it a step further and argue that these incredible companies would run even better and more efficiently without the layers and lethargy that comes with this extreme rate of employee expansion”, Gerstner added.
TWEET OF THE DAY
After Delhivery, Nykaa plummets below issue price
Shares of new-age beauty and fashion retailer Nykaa on Tuesday hit a record low to slip below its IPO issue price of Rs 1,125, thus eroding over 56% of shareholder wealth from its 52-week high.
As investors continued to dump Nykaa or FSN E-Commerce Ventures ahead of the mandatory lock-in expiry date for pre-IPO investors on November 10, the stock was down 2% in trade at the day’s low of Rs 1,120.25.
Brokerages bullish: While investors have been dumping Nykaa on account of rising competition in the e-commerce market, brokerages remain bullish on the stock, with their average target price at Rs 1,664, or an upside potential of up to 45.5%.
“It is quite unique compared with most online companies due to its strong focus to curate brands and helping customers in their discovery journey. Brands see it as a key partner in educating customers and driving adoption of premium products,” Nomura said.
Following Delhivery route? Shares of new-age logistics firm Delhivery fell 18% last Friday to close at Rs 386.55 on the BSE following a muted growth outlook from the firm. This was after the stock had plummeted 15% on Thursday.
The Delhivery stock took a beating after the firm, in a stock exchange filing on Wednesday, said it was likely to see an adverse impact from high inflation and would clock moderate growth in shipments for the rest of the financial year.
Today’s ETtech Top 5 newsletter was curated by Gaurab Dasgupta in New Delhi and Siddharth Sharma in Bengaluru. Graphics and illustrations by Rahul Awasthi.
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