According to international news reports, Epic Games, famed for its popular title "Fortnite," filed a lawsuit against Apple and Google three years ago over illegal monopolistic practices in their app stores. Recently, Epic has achieved a significant victory in this legal battle. Regarding the lawsuit against Google, the jury recently made a decision, confirming that Google's Google Play app store and its associated billing services constitute illegal monopolistic behavior.
After several hours of in-depth discussions, the jury unanimously ruled that Google holds a monopolistic position in the Android app distribution market and in-app billing services market. Their market conduct has hindered competition, causing damage to Epic Games. The jury noted that Google violated antitrust laws by bundling its app store with payment services and that its distribution agreements with game developers and OEM manufacturers also breached legal regulations.
This victory is of historical significance for Epic, especially against the backdrop of its near failure in a lawsuit against Apple nearly two years ago. In that case, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled that the lawsuit was unrelated to the applications. However, Epic's lawsuit against Google is quite different, focusing on Google's secret revenue-sharing agreements with smartphone manufacturers and major game developers. Google's top executives believe these agreements were to suppress rival app stores, reflecting Google's particular wariness of Epic.
Importantly, it's still unclear in what specific aspects Epic has won. This will be determined by Judge James Donato, who will decide on the appropriate remedies. Epic did not seek financial compensation in the lawsuit but rather aimed for a court directive to Google, allowing every app developer to freely launch their own app stores and billing systems within the Android ecosystem. Next, both parties will meet with Judge Donato in the second week of January next year to discuss possible remedies.
Epic's chief lawyer, Gary Bernstein, revealed on November 28th that Judge Donato has indicated he would not approve Epic's additional request for an anti-circumvention clause to prevent Google from reintroducing the same issues through other innovative solutions.
Judge Donato made it clear, "We will not issue an injunction. If there are other related issues, you can file again." He also emphasized that he would not interfere with Google's decisions on charging for its products and services.
In his final statement, Bernstein pointed out, "For smartphone manufacturers looking to choose an operating system, Google is almost the only option. This gives Google unparalleled influence."
Epic's CEO Tim Sweeney, while not seeking compensation from Google, mentioned that if Epic were not required to pay fees to Google, the company could save hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars.
Information disclosed during the trial revealed that Google deleted some of its employees' chat records, which might have contained important information related to the case. Both the judge and the jury speculated that this deleted information might be unfavorable to Google.
In a similar lawsuit against Apple, although Epic successfully persuaded the judge to require Apple to relax its app store payment restrictions, it lost in several other aspects of the lawsuit.
Google had previously reached a settlement with Match Group, the parent company of the dating app Tinder, and other states that joined Epic in suing Google.
Although revenue from the app store constitutes a small percentage of Google's total income, this market is a core part of the suite of services Google licenses to Android device manufacturers. These manufacturers play a key role in promoting Google's "cash cow" — the search engine.