Alphabet Inc.'s Google is asking a federal appeals court to throw out a ruling in an antitrust case brought by Fortnite-maker Epic Games that would force the search giant to overhaul its Play mobile app store.
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A San Francisco jury concluded in December 2023 that Google violated antitrust law by blocking rival app stores through a series of revenue-sharing agreements with mobile device makers like Samsung. Following up with a fix in October, Donato ordered Google to allow developers to set up app marketplaces and offer consumers billing options other than its own payment system.
Alphabet Inc.'s Google is now asking a federal appeals court to throw out a ruling in an antitrust case brought by Fortnite-maker Epic Games that would force the search giant to overhaul its Play mobile app store.
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Epic first sued Google and Apple in August 2020, accusing them of blocking competition for rival app stores. The judge in the Apple case largely ruled against Epic, though she directed the iPhone maker to make some changes to its App Store rules. Epic and Apple are currently fighting in an Oakland federal court over whether the iPhone maker is abiding by that ruling.
The reason that Google got ruled against originally was that they were paying and offering incentives to developers to keep them from releasing their apps on other app stores.
Google also doesn’t support a user installing the Play Store themselves (and the required Google Play Services dependency). So phone manufactures have to choose to include it on everybody’s phone from the get go, or their users won’t be able to use it at all.