Huge win for Epic Games in their court case against Google. The court decided that Google’s Play app store operated as an illegal monopoly and the case also challenged the transaction fees of up to 30% that Google imposes on Android app developers.

Fast Key Highlights:

  1. It’s still unclear what the penalty will be, court won’t rule on this till January
  2. There’s speculation in the media that this could lead to forcing Google to offer alternative app stores
  3. Google ironically used privacy measures (self-deleting messages) to hide the anti-competative behavior internally. (see below)
  4. Epic filed a similar antitrust case against Apple in 2020, but a US judge ruled in favor of Apple in 2021

Very Brief Background: The court case originally began when Epic Games began collecting payments from users directly, bypassing Apple and Google’s steep fees. As backlash, the two companies banned Epic’s apps from their respective app stores. So Epic took it to court. First the Apple ruling went against them, but now the Google one is in their favor. The full effects of what this means are still unclear and most internet talk is now just speculation.

Kicker: The judge in the California court case scolded Google during the trial for deleting many internal chats that would have incriminated the company. The ultimate ironic move for a company whose past CEO Eric Schmidt claimed “if you have nothing to hide, you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

Source: simplifiedprivacy.com/epicgoogle/