In defence of its Android Play Store, Google is returning to court for its second antitrust trial in as many months.
In addition to continuing to fight the Department of Justice and a bipartisan group of states’ monopoly claims in Washington, D.C. District Court, Google now has to take on Epic Games in a federal court located in San Francisco.
Apple, which runs the competing iPhone App Store, will be eagerly monitoring the Epic trial, which gets underway on Monday and centres on Google’s treatment of independent mobile developers. Developers have criticised both businesses of unfairly keeping a portion of in-app purchases and of making it more difficult for app developers to interact with their users.
Google levies a 15% to 30% fee on digital products and services purchased within apps; an epic triumph could push Google to rethink this. It might enable Epic to preinstall its store on devices, so facilitating consumers’ ability to download games without going through Google’s store.
The conflict arose from an August 2020 event in which Epic released updates for its game Fortnite that gave the firm the ability to charge users for in-app purchases without going via app stores.
Google and Apple removed Fortnite from their shops very quickly. Epic filed lawsuits against both businesses in an effort to get permission for direct invoicing and unrestricted smartphone installation of the Epic store.
Apple was sued by Epic, and the case was appealed earlier this year. It went to trial in 2021. Depending on if the Supreme Court decides to hear Epic’s case against Apple, the company may be able to win one concession about contacting clients despite losing on nine out of ten counts.
Source (CNBC)
