Google pays $700 million in US antitrust case and adjusts Store policy
Google pays $700 million settlement in antitrust lawsuit with all US states. The majority of the settlement money, $630 million, will go to a fund for affected consumers. The company promises to change its Play Store policies.
According to prosecutors, Google charged too high prices for app purchases through the Play Store and must therefore pay at least $2 per affected consumer through the fund. The remaining $70 million will go to a fund for the American states. By settling the lawsuit, which ended in September but the outcome of which has so far been kept secret, Google is technically not admitting guilt.
Details of the settlement could be withheld because the lawsuit with Epic Games is substantively similar. Epic was recently ruled in favor by the US federal court in that lawsuit, after which the substantive content of the settlement has now been revealed. Epic criticized the settlement in a statement, saying it does not address the core problem, Google’s “anti-competitive policies.”
The company was accused in the antitrust case of abuse of power with its Android operating system and the Play Store in the United States. In the settlement, Google makes a number of promises about its Play Store policy for that specific country, the company says in its own blog post. For example, there should be an alternative payment system for apps in the US. The company says it has been testing such a system for over a year, referring to the UCB system that was set up with Spotify. According to court documents, developers should be allowed to offer alternative in-app payment methods for five years, according to the Financial Times.
Furthermore, the company says that sideloading apps will be made easy in Android: “We will further simplify the sideloading process and update the warning that users see about the potential risk of downloading apps directly from the web.” It is not clear how downloading apps outside the Play Store will change. According to Google, manufacturers still have the option to offer their own app stores, which, according to the initial lawsuit, was hampered by the dominant position of the Play Store.