Anti-steering
Topic: Market Structures, Market Failure and Competition · NCERT: Beyond NCERT
Meaning
Anti-steering means platform rules that stop business users from pointing customers to cheaper offers or other payment options outside the platform. A seller or app developer is barred from telling buyers "you can pay less elsewhere". This keeps sales and fees locked inside the platform. It also weakens price competition from outside channels. In India it is one of the ten anti-competitive practices listed by the Standing Committee on Finance (report December 2022). The draft Digital Competition Bill (March 2024) proposes banning it for very large digital firms.
Example
Suppose an app store's billing rules stop a music app from telling users inside the app that its subscription is cheaper on its own website. That is anti-steering. App-store billing was at the centre of the CCI's Google Play Store billing case. In October 2022 the CCI fined Google ₹936.44 crore in that case.
Don't confuse with
- Self-preferencing: here the platform favours its own products over rivals' products, for example in search rankings. Anti-steering instead limits what business users can tell their customers about deals outside the platform.
Related concepts
- Network effects
- Two-sided market
- Switching costs
- Winner-takes-all market
- Gatekeeper platform
- Self-preferencing
- Deep discounting
- Killer acquisition