Google CEO Sundar Pichai (L), and Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney.
Reuters
A federal court jury decided late Monday that Google‘s Android app store, Google Play, uses anti-competitive practices that hurt consumers and software developers.
The verdict is a significant win for Epic Games and its CEO, Tim Sweeney, which have been fighting against mobile app stores and their fees since 2020 — including an unsuccessful challenge to Apple‘s App Store rules which is currently being appealed to the Supreme Court.
Sweeney attributed the win to revelations during the trial that Google had allegedly deleted or failed to keep records such as chats about its secretive deals with app makers. He also noted that it had been a jury trial, while the Apple case was decided by a judge.
“The brazenness of Google executives violating the law, and then deleting all of the records of violating the law,” Sweeney said in an interview with CNBC. “That was really astonishing. This is very much not a normal court case, you don’t expect a trillion-dollar corporation to operate the way Google operated.”
Epic Games originally sued Google in 2020, alleging it uses its dominant position as the developer of Android to strike deals with handset makers and collect excess fees from consumers. Google collects between 15% and 30% for all digital purchases made through its storefront. Epic tried to bypass those fees by charging users directly for purchases in the popular game Fortnite; Google then booted the game out of its store, spurring the lawsuit.
The decision could give app makers a bigger revenue share of the digital app market, which is currently dominated by Google and Apple, and is worth about $200 billion per year. The loss for Google could also empower other antitrust-based challenges to the search giant’s business, including a similar case brought by the Department of Justice.
Monday’s unanimous verdict came after a four-week trial in federal court in California. The jury found that Google acquired…
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