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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – A federal judge has ruled that Google’s Android app store is protected by antitrust barriers that harm smartphone consumers and programmers, thus delivering a blow to a major pillar of a technological empire.
The unanimous decision reached on Monday came after only three hours of deliberations after four weeks of litigation surrounding a cheap payment system in the Google Play Store. The store is the main place where hundreds of millions of people around the world find and install software that works on mobile phones powered by Google’s Android software.
Epic Games, the creator of the popular video game Fortnite, filed a lawsuit against Google three years ago, claiming that the search engine company used its power to protect its Game Store from competition to protect a gold mine that makes billions of money. dollars each year. Just as Apple does for its iPhone store, Google collects a commission of 15% to 30% on digital transactions completed within the apps.
Apple victory in such a situation brought by Epic against the iPhone store. But that 2021 trial was decided by a federal judge in a decision that is under appeal to the US Supreme Court.
The nine-member jury in the Play Store case seemed to see things through a different lens, although Google specifically allows Android apps to be downloaded from different stores – an option that Apple prohibits. on the iPhone.
Before the Play Store trial began, Google tried to avoid having a jury decide the outcome, only to have its request rejected by US District Judge James Donato. Now Donato will be in charge of determining what steps Google should take to eliminate its illegal behavior in the Game Store. The judge said that he will review the case in the second week of January.
Epic CEO Tim Sweeney was all smiles after the verdict was read and punched his lawyers in the back and shook hands with Google’s lawyer. , where he praised her professionalism during the proceedings.
“Victory to Google!” Sweeney wrote in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. In a company postEpic hailed the decision as a “win for all application developers and customers worldwide.”
Google plans to appeal the decision, according to a statement from Wilson White, the company’s vice president of public affairs and policy.
“Android and Google Play provide more choice and openness than any other mobile app,” White said.
Depending on whether the judge upholds the jury verdict, Google could lose billions of dollars in annual profits from its commissions. of Sports Stores. The company’s main source of revenue – digital advertising which is heavily linked to its search engine, Gmail and other services – will not be directly affected by court decision.
The jury’s decision was reached after hearing two hours of closing arguments by the opposing sides of the case.
Epic lawyer Gary Bornstein accuses Google of being an unethical threat to implement a “trick and block” plan to weaken competition against its Play Store for Android apps. Google’s lawyer Jonathan Kravis attacked Epic as a self-interested game developer who tried to use the court to save money while destroying an ecosystem that gave rise to billions of mobile apps to compete. and Apple and its iPhone.
Many of the arguments of the lawyers were affected by the testimony of many witnesses who came to the court during the trial.
Key witnesses included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, sometimes it looks like a professor explaining complex subjects while standing in the back of a classroom due to a health problem, and Sweeney, who paints himself as a video game enthusiast on a mission to take down a greedy tech titan.
In his final argument for Epic, Bornstein protested against Google for using its power over the Android system in a way that “has led to higher costs for developers and consumers, as well as to a decrease in innovation.” and good.”
Google has staunchly defended the commissions as a way to help recoup the more than $40 billion it poured into building Android software that has been distributed since 2007 to manufacturers that competing with the iPhone.
“Mobile phones can’t compete with the iPhone without a big store on them,” Kravis said in his closing argument. “The competition between app stores is related to the competition between phones.”
But Bornstein scoffed at the idea of Google and Android competing against Apple and its incompatible iPhone software. “Apple is not the ‘get out of jail free’ card that Google wants,” Bornstein told the editors.
Google also pointed to the lack of Android stores that Samsung installs on its phones as evidence of a free market. Along with commercial stores pre-installed on devices made by other companies, more than 60% of mobile phones offer other options for Android apps.
Epic, however, presented evidence to support the idea that Google accepts the competition as an example, citing the hundreds of billions of dollars given to companies, such as the sports game Activision Blizzard , to discourage them from opening commercial shops. In addition to making these payments, Bornstein also urged the jury to consider Google’s “scary eyes” that are showing, warning consumers of the potential security risks when they try to download Android apps. from some other things in the Play Store.
“These are common anticompetitive strategies used by prominent companies to protect their monopolies,” said Bornstein.
Google’s government can be further harmed b the next big antitrust court in Washington A federal judge will decide after closing arguments in May. That judgment is focused on on Google’s warm relationship with Apple on internet search, the technology that turned Google into a household word just a few years after the company was started by two former graduates of the Stanford University company in Silicon Valley’s garage in 1998.