SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) – Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite, won a major United States (US) court battle against Google on Monday when a jury decided that the search engine giant wields illegal monopoly power through its Android app store.
Epic sued Google and Apple in 2020, accusing the tech titans of abusing control of their respective shops selling apps and other digital content on mobile devices.
Google and Apple take percentages of all financial transactions at their app shops, prompting complaints by developers about an unfair “tax” imposed by the companies.
The defeat is a rare setback for a US tech giant in a US court, where judges have recently ruled in favour of big tech against accusations of running illegal monopolies or abusing their market power.
The San Francisco jury took just a few hours to decide against Google, finding that the company had embarked on various illegal strategies to maintain its app store monopoly on Android phones.
“Victory over Google! After four weeks of detailed court testimony, the California jury found against the Google Play monopoly on all counts,” Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said on X (formerly Twitter).
The case now goes back to the judge to decide how to remedy the harm found by the jury, which could force open the Android operating system to competing app stores.
Google said it would appeal the decision and the case could still drag on for months or years.
“We will continue to defend the Android business model and remain deeply committed to our users, partners, and the Android ecosystem,” said Google’s vice president for government affairs and public policy Wilson White.
Phones running on the Android operating system have about a 70 per cent share of the world’s smartphone market.
Smartphone companies can install the Android app for free under the condition that the Play app store remains on the home page and that other Google offers are pre-installed.
During the trial it emerged that Google worked aggressively in other ways to make sure that the Google Play app store was the only conduit for making payments to third party apps such as Fortnite and other games.
