Epic Games won the antitrust case against Google in December, when a federal jury found the latter violated US antitrust laws over how it operated the Play Store. A few months later, the game developer presented a list of requirements that, if implemented, would be Open the Play Store wide. Now, Google has filed a court order saying that no, it won’t give Epic what it wants without a fight, because what the company is asking is “far beyond the track record.”
Epic’s tools not only require the court to create a global regulatory regime to set prices for apps, Google writes in the filing, as seen by Engadget, but also to micromanage a “highly complex and dynamic ecosystem” used by billions of consumers. and software developers worldwide. As you may recall, Epic wants Google to open up Android to third-party app stores and make its catalog of apps available to those stores. It also wants restrictions on pre-installed apps to be outlawed and any Google activity that encourages third parties to be banned.
Google said bowing to all these demands would “effectively prevent [it] Discouraging “competition”, which in turn will have a negative impact on Android users and developers. Epic’s proposals only benefit Epic, Google said in its filing, and would hurt other developers by denying them control over where their apps are distributed. Manufacturers will no longer be able to do this. to take advantage of the partnerships Google typically offers, while users must face additional security and privacy risks.
The company also criticized Epic for the “vagueness” of its proposed order, which would require repeated and ongoing intervention by the courts. Similarly, Epic’s demands would require the court to micromanage Google’s business.
“Epic’s demands will harm the privacy, security, and overall experience of consumers, developers, and device manufacturers,” Wilson White, Google’s Vice President of Government Affairs and Public Policy, told Engadget. “Not only does their proposal go beyond the scope of the recent US court decision – which we will challenge – it is also unnecessary because of the agreement we reached last year with Attorneys General from every state and many territories. We will continue to do so. We need to keep people safe.” , we strongly defend our right to a sustainable business model that allows us to partner with developers to innovate and grow their businesses, and to maintain a thriving Android ecosystem for everyone.”
Google said that if Epic really wants to promote competition instead of creating an “unfair, judicially enforceable advantage for itself,” then it will take cues from its settlement with government officials who previously accused the company of abusing its dominance in Android app distribution. . Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, unsurprisingly, unhappy with this settlement, tweet at the time: “If Google ends its payments monopoly without imposing a Google Tax on third-party transactions, we will agree and be friends with Google in their new era. But when leaving the Google Tax, the settlement simply pays other bidders. We not only open antitrust app markets to consumers, but also price if it restores its competition, we will benefit from it.”
