The monopoly of Google’s Play Store is coming to an end. A US judge ruled that the company must open Android and its app store to stores from competitors.
A final ruling has fallen in the case of Google v. Epic. In it, the competent U.S. court says Google must effectively open both Android’s Play app store to competition for three years. As part of that decision, Google is required to offer third-party app stores, such as Epic Games Store, within Google Play starting in 2025. Competition must also have access to the full catalog of Google Play apps so they can offer them themselves.
Google versus Epic?
Epic sued Google and Apple in 2020 for removing the game Fortnite from their app stores. That happened because Epic was trying to circumvent a 30% fee on in-app purchases. Apple largely won the case; Google’s started much later and dragged on longer.
Last year, a jury unanimously concluded that Google was operating an illegal monopoly with its Play Store and that certain deals with game developers and publishers were anti-competitive.
Google will have eight months to come up with a new system. The company still checks the security of all digital stores, and can charge a fee to perform those checks. Epic also wanted to have those checks abolished, but that ultimately did not happen.
Epic, meanwhile, is filing a second lawsuit against Google for allegedly already trying to circumvent the measures, The Verge knows. Google would already be taking steps to make integrating third-party app stores more complex.
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