Google ordered to open Play store to rivals after antitrust loss to Epic Games | Google

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ordered to open Play store to rivals after antitrust loss to Epic Games |

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A US judge on Monday ordered Alphabet’s

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to overhaul its mobile app business to give Android users more options to download apps and to pay for transactions within them, following a jury verdict last year for the Fortnite game maker Epic Games. The injunction by US district judge James Donato in San Francisco outlined the changes

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must undertake to open up its lucrative app store, Play, to greater competition, including making Android apps available from rival sources.

Donato’s order said that for three years

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cannot prohibit the use of in-app payment methods and must allow users to download competing third-party Android app platforms or stores.

The order restricts

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from making payments to device makers to preinstall its app store and from sharing revenue generated from the Play store with other app distributors.

Alphabet shares were down 2.2% following the ruling. Donato said Epic and

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must establish a three-person technical committee to implement and monitor the injunction. Epic and

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each get a pick, and those two members will select the third person.

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has said it plans to appeal the verdict that led to the injunction, and it could ask the San Francisco-based ninth US circuit court of appeals to pause Donato’s order pending appeal.

Donato said his injunction would go into effect on 1 November, which he said would give

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time to “bring its current agreements and practices into compliance”.

Epic’s lawsuit, filed in 2020, accused

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of monopolizing how consumers access apps on Android devices and how they pay for in-app transactions. The Cary, North Carolina-based company persuaded a jury in December 2023 that

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unlawfully stifled competition through its controls over app distribution and payments, paving the way for Donato’s injunction.

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had urged Donato to ******* Epic’s proposed reforms, arguing they were costly, overly restrictive and could harm consumer privacy and security. The judge mostly dismissed those arguments during an August hearing.

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“You’re going to end up paying something to make the world right after having been found to be a monopolist,” he told

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’s lawyers.

In a separate antitrust case in Washington, US district judge Amit Mehta on 5 August ruled for the US justice department and said

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had illegally monopolized web search, spending billions to become the internet’s default search engine.

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also began a trial in September in Virginia federal court in a justice department lawsuit over its dominance in the market for advertising technology.

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has denied the claims in all three cases.

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#ordered #open #Play #store #rivals #antitrust #loss #Epic #Games #

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