Jury hands Epic win in antitrust case against Google

12.12.2023 - 02:05 / venturebeat.com

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Epic Games won big in court today as the jury in its antitrust case ruled that Google has been operating an illegal monopoly with its Google Play app store and billing service.

The case comes three years after Epic Games sued both Google and Apple for the alleged anticompetitive practices in the restrictions it imposes on developers when it comes to its platform for distributing and making payments in its mobile app store.

The case was very different in terms of outcome from the antitrust case against Apple, which Epic Games largely lost. It still has a last-ditch appeal at the U.S. Supreme Court, but a lower court judge and an appeals court affirmed that Epic failed to prove its case that Apple was a monopolist. Epic won on just one point — that app and game devs should be allowed to advertise their alternative stores with lower prices inside their apps that are available on the Apple app store.

But in this case, the jury decided Google had illegally tied its app store and its billing payment service together. And it also ruled that “Project Hug” deals, where Google paid game developers not to compete with its app store, were anticompetitive too.

To me, Project Hug was the biggest difference between the Apple and Google cases. Since Apple makes its own smartphones, it didn’t have to cut deals with other companies to secure its business advantages. But while Google created the Android standard, it has invited many smartphone manufacturers to make phones based on the standard. To secure universal cooperation and to keep its Google Play store strong, Google initiated Project Hug, where it paid alternative stores such as Samsung and game developers substantial amounts of money to use its store rather than compete with it or to foreclose competition.

For instance, with Samsung, Google paid Samsung money to ensure that Google Play was the only app store preinstalled on Samsung smartphones, aside from Samsung’s own store. And Google allegedly paid game developers to use the Google Play store rather than open up their own competing stores. Epic brought witnesses, including former Google employees, who testified to the alleged anticompetitive intent.

Epic argued these practices enabled Google to extract excessive fees — as much as 30% royalties — for every purchase of an app, game, or in-game virtual good. Developers had no choice but to go along and pay the fees, Epic argued, and the jury evidently agreed.

In contrast to the Apple case, Epic was able to surface witnesses during the Google trial who said that Google made payments with anticompetitive intent in mind when it convinced