The four-week trial included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who due to health issues sometimes looked like a professor standing behind a podium explaining complex topics, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who describes himself as a video game enthusiast. It included testimony from both Epic CEO Tim Sweeney, who described it as a A mission to defeat greedy tech giants.
Epic claims that Google is exploiting its wealth and control of the Android software that powers most of the world’s smartphones to protect a lucrative payment system within the Play Store for distributing Android apps. insisted. Google collects his 15-30% commission from digital transactions completed within apps, similar to what Apple does for the iPhone app store. This system generates billions of dollars in profits annually.
Google has staunchly defended the fees as a way to recoup the huge investments it has made in building the Android software it has provided free to manufacturers to compete with the iPhone since 2007, citing rival Android app stores such as: Ta. What Samsung is installing on its popular smartphones as proof of the free market.
But Epic has cited Google offering hundreds of billions of dollars to prevent companies such as game maker Activision Blizzard from opening rival app stores as an excuse to welcome competition. He presented evidence to support the idea that there is.
The jury’s verdict in this case will likely depend on how the smartphone app market is defined. Epic has argued that Google’s Play Store is a de facto monopoly that drives up prices for consumers and prevents app makers from developing new products, but in addition to the Android app store, Google also owns Apple’s iPhone app store. It painted a picture of a broad and fiercely competitive market including: Alternative to Play Store.
Google’s insistence that it compete with Apple in app distribution, despite relying on incompatible mobile operating systems, spotlights the two companies’ cozy relationship in online search. The relationship is the subject of another major antitrust case in Washington. After hearing closing arguments in May, a federal judge said:
The Washington lawsuit alleges that Google is abusing its dominance in the online search market, including by paying billions of dollars to automatically process queries sent to computers and mobile devices such as iPhones. The case is centered on the ministry’s complaint.
Evidence filed in both San Francisco and Washington shows that Google paid $26.3 billion in 2021 to make its search the default choice on various web browsers and smartphones, with the bulk of that going to Apple. It revealed that. Although he did not reveal the exact amount, Pichai acknowledged that Google shared 36% of its revenue from searches on the Safari browser with Apple in 2021.
Epic’s lawsuit against Google’s Android app store mirrors another lawsuit filed by the video game maker against Apple and its iPhone app store. Apple’s case went to trial over a month in 2021 during the pandemic, with Epic losing on all major claims.
But Apple’s case was decided by a federal judge, not a jury, which would decide the verdict in Google’s case.