Google Committed To Complying With India’s New IT Rules: CEO Sundar Pichai

In the latest development, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Google Sundar Pichai said on Thursday (27 May) that the search engine giant is committed to complying with India’s latest IT rules that came into effect on 26 May, reports Economic Times.

"It's obviously early days and our local teams are very engaged. You know we comply with local laws and we will approach it with the same framework," Pichai said in a video conference with select reporters from Asia Pacific. "We engage and explain to everyone the importance of information, promoting (the) free flow of information, but do want to respect legislative processes in democratic countries."

"We are committed to complying (with the laws). And to the extent there are requests (for information on users) we comply with and we will include that in our transparency reports. It is a framework with which we will operate it around the world," he said.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) had asked the social media platform to abide by the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 by 25 May or face strict action.

The MeitY had announced its draft new IT (Intermediary Guidelines) Rules for social media platforms on 25 February.

As per the new rules, social media platforms will have to remove offending content within 36 hours after a government directive or a legal order.

The new rules mandate that the intermediaries, including social media intermediaries, must establish a grievance redressal mechanism for receiving/resolving complaints from the users or victims.

"We respect the sovereignty of countries and the legislative processes. We work hard to adapt and function and where we need to push back, we do that. It is a balance we have stuck around the world. India is a vibrant place where we are able to provide a lot of information across a lot of our products and so will operate with that framework," Pichai added.