high drama unfolded on friday afternoon as search engine giant google removed mobile payment application paytm from its play store citing breach of its gambling restrictions before bringing it back again by evening paytms fantasy gaming application was also removed ahead of the start of the indian premier league ipl on saturday and was not back till the filing of this reportthe removal of paytms application which takes away the ability to get new users elicited widespread disapproval among indias startup ecosystem as the usbased technology giants unit google pay competes with it in indiaread alsogoogles action abuse of monopoly vijay shekharnew delhi vijay shekhar sharma the founder of paytm is livid after google pulled down the popular payments app from its play store it has been restored since and accused the american tech giant of abusing its monopoly to unfairly gain customers for its own payments business he said hispaytms founder vijay shekhar sharma who said google was acting like judge jury and executioner told toi the company was notified in the morning that the app was being taken down due to a cricket sticker promo on payments it was running in the promo a user who collects five stickers is entitled to a cashback many such schemes run across other payment platforms as well it had also received warnings for promoting paytm first games a sports fantasy platform on its main application thriceas paytms app was taken down google without naming paytm said in a blog post that it doesnt allow online casinos or support any unregulated gambling apps that facilitate sports betting this includes if an app leads consumers to an external website that allows them to participate in paid tournaments to win real money or cash prizes it is a violation of our policies the usbased internet search giant said other online fantasy platforms like dream11 mpl and my11circle have also not been available on googles play store for the last couple of years due to its policy sources said googles action was led by paytm promoting its fantasy gaming unit though its main app they paytm were promoting links of paytm first games within the main paytm app if you click on it it will take you to the fantasy gaming platform of paytm which includes betting thats not allowed as per play store policy thats why the app had to be taken down a person close to the development said while betting is not allowed in india various state high courts have called fantasy sports a game of skill and not of chance making it legal as of nowbut even as google does not allow fantasy gaming apps on its app store these platforms are allowed to advertise on its search engine which several experts have pointed out as contradictory policy an undetermined implication would be the compliance of its policies by sports fantasy apps like dream 11 and mpl that are not directly available on the google play store platform but