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In a notable legal development, a US judge ruled on Monday that Google must permit rival app stores on its Android smartphone operating system. This decision poses a significant challenge to the tech giant, potentially leading to a more competitive environment in the mobile app industry.
A California jury has ruled against Google in an antitrust lawsuit filed by Epic Games, the creator of Fortnite, concluding that the tech giant holds an unlawful monopoly over the Android Play Store.
After just a few hours of deliberation in December, a San Francisco jury determined that Google had employed several unlawful strategies to retain its monopoly in the Android app store market.
This order, now being challenged by Google, arrived on the heels of an August ruling in which a separate federal judge concluded that Google’s search engine also operates as an illegal monopoly.
Google is contending with yet another antitrust lawsuit, this time in Virginia, where federal authorities are focusing on its powerful grip over online advertising.
Under the latest order, for the next three years Google will be prohibited from engaging in several practices that were deemed anticompetitive by the jury in the landmark case.
These prohibitions include revenue sharing with potential competitors and requirements that developers launch apps exclusively on the Play Store.
The judge has also ordered the creation of a three-person Technical Committee to oversee the implementation of the changes and resolve any disputes that may arise.
This injunction represents a significant challenge to Google’s dominance in the Android app ecosystem and could reshape the mobile app landscape in the coming years.
Google said it would appeal the injunction and also demand that it be set aside pending the outcome of its challenge.
“We look forward to continuing to make our case on appeal, and we will keep advocating for what is best for developers, device manufacturers and the billions of Android users around the world,” said Lee-Anne Mulholland, the company’s regulatory affairs vice president.
Read also: ‘Bad Stories’: Trump Vows To Prosecute Google After Winning
Phones running on the Android operating system have about a 70 percent share of the world’s smartphone market.
Smartphone companies can install the Android app for free under the condition that the Play app store remains on the home page and that other Google offers are pre-installed.
The jury found that Google worked illegally to make sure that the Google Play app store was the only conduit for making payments to third party apps such as Fortnite and other games.
A sizable chunk of app store revenue comes from video games, and Epic Games has long sought to have payments for its mobile games, such as Fortnite, take place outside the Google or Apple app stores that take commissions as high as 30 percent.
Epic mostly lost a similar case against Apple, where a different US judge largely ruled in favor of the iPhone maker.
