Google will have to adjust its Play Store in the US to allow competing stores. The judge also ordered several measures to further prevent the formation of a monopoly.
Epic Games, the creator of games like Fortnite, also won its appeals court case against Google. The judge thus confirms that Google, through its Android Play Store, indeed holds a monopoly on user access to apps and financial transactions. The court also orders Google to allow alternative app stores within the Play Store in the US.
Epic Games launched a series of lawsuits against both Apple and Google in 2020 to gain more control over in-app purchases in its popular games. In practice, Epic Games aims to utilise its own payment systems, thereby circumventing the Android and iOS systems, which charge commissions to Google and Apple for every purchase.
Profession
Epic Games partially lost its lawsuit against Apple. The company succeeded in enforcing some anti-monopoly measures, but Apple is currently prohibited from opening its own App Store. However, the case against Google went differently.
Google failed to overturn a previous ruling on appeal regarding its Play Store. In 2023, a jury already concluded that Google illegally suppressed competition on its platform. Google’s lawyers argued that the court erred in that regard, but the appeal upheld the previous ruling. This means Epic Games has won its case against Google.
The judge has now ordered Google to open its Play Store to other app stores. This means that the Epic Store, which already exists for Android but requires some technical knowledge of sideloading, must also be included in the Play Store. Google must also make apps from its Play Store available to competing app stores. The judge has given Google approximately eight months to achieve this.
In addition, Google must take several other anti-monopoly measures, which were also previously granted in the Apple lawsuit. These include a ban on exclusivity agreements with app developers and hardware manufacturers.
According to Google, all of this will have disastrous consequences for consumer safety and will also reduce freedom of choice and innovation. The ruling is particularly unfortunate for the tech giant. The company is currently embroiled in various monopoly lawsuits and EU investigations.
