Epic’s victory over Google just got real with new detail on how the US courts will try to enforce fair competition in the Android app ecosystem.
Court documents posted and summarised by The Verge state that effective November 1 2024 and for a period of three years, Google can’t stop developers from messaging and linking out to alternative payment methods or other app stores.
It’s also not allowed to make developers use Google Pay Billing to be listed on the Play Store, or offer any financial or technical incentives to developers in exchange for Play Store exclusivity. Google can’t offer developers incentives to not offer their games on rival stores, either.
The US court will now prohibit Google from offering device makers incentives to pre-install its Play Store, and conversely offer money or other incentives to rivals to not have competitive stores pre-installed on new phones and tablets.
The wording in the court ruling is less clear, however, on removing the many ‘scare screens’ that pop-up when a user downloads a rival app store on an Android device. Google will still be “entitled to take reasonable measures” to ensure app stores and the apps they offer are “safe from a computer systems and security standpoint” and do not offer “illegal goods or services” under US law, or violate Google’s content standards.
All competitive app stores will also be granted access to the complete catalogue of apps on the Play Store, another measure designed to even the playing field for new entrants to the market. Google has eight months to come up with a way of offering this to all rival Android app stores.
If a rival app store is not selling the app directly through its own relationship with the developer, Google Play will handle the download and keep the associated revenue, if any. The download will be installed under Google’s Play Store policies.
The court ruling also notes that in the post-verdict discussions Google had tried to slow down and confuse proceedings. “It bears mention that Google has, on several occasions, fired a blunderbuss of comments and complaints that are underdeveloped and consequently unhelpful in deciding the issues,” says the ruling.
Epic Games won its court battle with Google in December 2023. The jury found that Google had been involved in anti-competitive behaviour to maintain its market position and that the linking of Google’s Play store and its billing system represents an illegal monopoly.
The measures announced today are “meant to restore economic freedom” and “break the shackles” of the “anticompetitive conduct” Google has been found guilty of, the ruling says.
During that trial, Google was found to have engaged in all sorts of anticompetitive behaviour to kneecap Play Store competition. ‘Project Hug’ offered key partners like Spotify and Netflix a discount on its usual 30% commission to stop them offering alternatives outside of Google Play, for example.
Google was also revealed to have offered marketing money and revenue sharing schemes to discourage the likes of Riot and Samsung from launching their own app stores. Google even offered Epic Games $147m to launch Fortnite on the Play Store to stop what internal Google emails called the ‘contagion’ of developers releasing their own game launchers through browsers. Google also considered buying Epic Games outright so it could put Fortnite on Google Play and make it a key part of the Android games ecosystem.
