A U.S. judge on Monday ordered Alphabet’s Google to overhaul its mobile app business to give Android users more options for downloading apps and paying for transactions within them, following a jury verdict last year for the game maker. Fortnite, Epic Games. The court order by U.S. District Judge James Donato in San Francisco outlined changes Google must make to open its lucrative app store, Play, to greater competition, including making Android apps available from rival sources.
Donato’s order said that for three years Google cannot prohibit the use of in-app payment methods and must allow users to download competing third-party Android platforms or app stores.
The order prevents Google from making payments to device manufacturers to pre-install its app store and from sharing revenue generated by the Play store with other app distributors.
Alphabet shares fell 2.2% after the ruling. Donato said Epic and Google should establish a three-person technical committee to implement and monitor the court order. Epic and Google can each choose, and those two members will select the third person.
Google has said it plans to appeal the verdict that led to the court order, and could ask the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to stay Donato’s order pending the appeal.
Donato said his court order would take effect on Nov. 1, which he said would give Google time to “bring into compliance with its current agreements and practices.”
Epic’s lawsuit, filed in 2020, accused Google of monopolizing how consumers access apps on Android devices and how they pay for in-app transactions. The Cary, North Carolina-based company convinced a jury in December 2023 that Google illegally stifled competition through its controls over app distribution and payments, paving the way for Donato’s injunction. Google had urged Donato to reject Epic’s proposed reforms, arguing that they were costly, too restrictive and could harm consumer privacy and security. The judge mostly dismissed those arguments during a hearing in August.
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“You will end up paying something to fix the world after being declared a monopolist,” he told Google’s lawyers.
In a separate antitrust case in Washington, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled Aug. 5 in favor of the U.S. Department of Justice, saying Google had illegally monopolized web searches, spending billions to become the powerhouse of default internet search. Google also began trial in federal court in Virginia in September in a Justice Department lawsuit over its dominance of the ad technology market.
Google has denied the claims in all three cases.
