When Fortnite video game creator Epic Games sued Google in 2020 over the monopoly held by its official Google Play Android app store, its allegations that the company was unfairly restricting competition immediately resonated with developer Hans-Christoph Steiner. Like Microsoft, Amazon, Samsung, and a few other tech companies, he oversees a rival app marketplace that has struggled to win users. If Epic beats Google at the trial scheduled to begin tomorrow in San Francisco, Google may be forced to make it easier for people to source apps from Steiner’s store and other alternatives.
Google Play accounts for well over 90 percent of all downloads onto Android phones in the US, according to state prosecutors. Epic’s accusations already have encouraged a few competition regulators, like in South Korea, to order Google to loosen some of its control over app distribution in their countries. Steiner, who is technical lead for F-Droid, which offers thousands of open source apps, including ad blockers banned under the Google Play store’s strict content rules, has been urging authorities contacting him from South Africa, the UK, EU, US, and just a month ago, Japan, to follow suit. But Google’s tight grip on what apps users can download and how much they pay for them has persisted in much of the world.
The 10 jurors to be selected in San Francisco on Thursday could force substantial changes in how Google controls apps. Their verdict is expected around mid-December. US district judge James Donato, who is overseeing the trial, would later determine any remedies. “It seems to be a pretty broad phenomenon these days,” Steiner says of the pressure on Google Play. “That’s quite exciting.” The trial starting this week is Google’s second courtroom battle against charges that it blocks competition, joining one underway in Washington, DC, that will decide whether Google has unlawfully maintained its monopoly over web search.
Judge Donato—following a last-minute settlement in a related Play store lawsuit—has given Epic and Google a final chance today to decide whether to face a jury or let him alone decide the California case.
Either way, Steiner and experts in antitrust law have reasons to doubt the trial will end in Google being forced to better support rivals. Epic in 2021 mostly lost a nearly identical case against Apple over its own app store monopoly for iOS devices, and it is waiting to find out whether the US Supreme Court will hear an appeal. In countries such as South Korea and India where antitrust regulators ordered Google to open the door to more competition, the company has through appeals and new terms found ways to make it no easier for users to download apps outside Play and pay any less for them.
Even if the San Francisco jurors find Google’s behavior to be unlawful, the possibility that Google could find a workaround rather than earnestly comply troubles Steiner. “We know they can make it such a second-class experience to use anything beside Google Play that it’s really not worth it to use alternatives,” he says.
Read the full article here
