Changing policy of Google impacted Indian MSMEs

Google’s announcement for rebranding of G-Suite to Google Workspace which has also raised several apprehensions amongst MSMEs. As per data there are approximately Five lakh MSME/SME have opted for the services of Google in India.

The Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) industry in India has expressed concern over Google’s latest policy modification which would require them to pay an additional amount of Rs 1500 crore to Rs 5000 crore annually.

Earlier Google email access would be around 7-10 percent of the total digital spending cost for operations which also included Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) subscriptions, hardware costs, internet costs etc. But, now with the pricing change it has impacted the overall spending in the budget and impacting the P&L of the MSME in the country, with the cost for Google email accounts have gone up to 30 percent of the overall digital spending.

A report says, Google India is doing revenue about 2.1billion USD in India, with a profitability about 70%. MSMEs have reported after doing so much revenue in India, why Google is playing Monopolistic act in the Industry, by placing “EXIST BARRIER” from the availing services of Google work space. Vishal Shah of Synersoft says that ,Google has also limited the band of data transfer at one go, in case someone wants to download data and move to some other service.

There are complex ways to export email data from Google Workspace. Most MSMEs cannot understand them, and all they can do is download all emails to the new service provider from Google. If I want to download all my emails to another service provider, Google has set a policy that I cannot download them continuously. It will allow a limited number of emails every hour and then wait for the next cycle. It takes days. And these days, my emails have stopped (read business),” Vishal said.

Industry body is appealing to the Competition Commission Of India ( CCA),if the authority can come out with a policy of smooth Porting of email ids’ from one service provider to another, like we can port our mobile phone from one service provider to another. After all it has to the choice of the user/customer, with whom he/she want to avail the service.

Now the industry bodies are appealing the CCI to come with a consultative mechanism on it. As on date only two tech giants are offering the overall cloud solutions and it is Google and Microsoft. The pricing structure for Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 differs by territory – but is broadly comparable from one country to another.

A review says, for the easiest document collaboration and the ability to create and access all of your documents wherever you work, Google Workspace is best. If your business needs advanced features and security, then Microsoft 365's office productivity and business email apps are better for your small business.

Praveen Khandelwal, Secretary General, Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) says, “Global technology MNCs usually craft a particular strategy for India which includes offering goods at most cheaper rates and services initially either free or at a very nominal charge with several add-on facilities. Once people or companies become habitual with their services, they increase the prices.

During the initial period these companies make use of AI and ML to track data and purchase capacity of each and every person/company using their services and at a later stage when the users become fully accustomed to their services, they start levelling high charges leaving no scope for the user to deny availing of services.