Digital competition bill has good intentions, but it might affect how you Google

livemint.com:

NEW DELHI : Soon, you may not be able to hop from Google search results to a hotel’s website to make a reservation, or even to Google Maps once you find the place you are looking for. Allowing users to head straight to Google Maps or a hotel’s website from the results page goes against the tenets of the draft digital competition bill, say industry executives and experts.

The draft bill, which seeks to prevent anti-competitive behaviour, proposes prohibiting the intermixing and cross-use of personal or business user data across different products or services without user consent. Google and other search engines might also have to stop surfacing sponsored links to products and services in its search results, as the bill proposes prohibiting what’s called ‘self-preferencing’.

This is broadly defined as giving preference to a digital platform’s own products or service, to those of related parties, or to third parties with whom it has an arrangement, an industry executive said on condition of anonymity. “The idea of the digital competition law is to ensure competitiveness in digital markets, which will ultimately benefit users and consumers.

However, many of the big tech companies and Indian digital entities are concerned that in the pursuit of ensuring competitiveness in the market, the law should not lose sight of the end goal, i.e., better products and services," said Pranjal Prateek, partner at law firm Khaitan & Co. “Some of the widely worded prohibitions under the draft bill could potentially diminish user experience and product usefulness." Google and the ministry of corporate affairs, which introduced the draft bill in March, did not reply to emails sent on Wednesday.