San Francisco:
A US judge on Monday ordered Google to open up its Android smartphone operating system to rival app stores, in a new legal setback for the tech giant.
The order follows Google's defeat in an antitrust lawsuit brought by Fortnite maker Epic Games, in which a California jury decided that Google exercises illegal monopoly power through its Android Play Store.
The San Francisco jury took just a few hours to rule against Google in December, concluding that the company had employed several illegal strategies to maintain its app store monopoly on Android phones.
The order, which Google is appealing, follows a similar setback in August, when another judge ruled that Google's leading search engine was also an illegal monopoly.
Google also faces an antitrust lawsuit in a third federal case in Virginia over its dominance in online advertising.
Under Epic Games' order, Google will be banned for the next three years from engaging in several practices deemed anticompetitive by the jury in the landmark case.
These bans include revenue sharing with potential competitors and requirements that developers launch apps exclusively on the Play Store.
The judge also ordered the establishment of a three-member Technical Committee to monitor the implementation of the changes and resolve any disputes.
This order poses a significant challenge to Google's dominance in the Android app ecosystem and could reshape the mobile app landscape for years to come.
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney urged companies to seize this opportunity “to build a vibrant and competitive Android ecosystem with such critical mass that Google cannot stop it.”
He also underlined that the changes would only apply in the US, but promised that “the legal and regulatory battle will continue around the world.”
– Google objects –
Google said it would appeal the order and also demand that the order be set aside pending the outcome of the ongoing legal battle.
The judge said the order took effect on November 1, with some provisions to be implemented until July 1.
“We will continue to advocate for what's best for developers, device makers and the billions of Android users around the world,” said Lee-Anne Mulholland, the company's vice president of regulatory affairs.
Phones running the Android operating system have an approximately 70 percent share of the world's smartphone market.
Smartphone companies can install the Android app for free, provided the Play app store remains on the homepage and other Google offerings are pre-installed.
The jury found that Google worked illegally to ensure that the Google Play App Store was the only channel for making payments to third-party apps such as Fortnite and other games.
A significant portion of its app store revenue comes from video games, and Epic Games has long sought to move payments for its mobile games, such as Fortnite, outside of Google or Apple's app stores, which charge commissions of up to 30 percent .
Epic largely lost a similar case against Apple, in which another US judge ruled largely in favor of the iPhone maker.
Apple and Google regularly claim that their app store commissions are industry standard and that they pay for benefits such as reach, transaction security and malware detection.
Google also argued that the deal with smartphone makers allowed Android devices to better compete with Apple's iPhone.
But the lawsuit found that Google rakes in tens of billions of dollars in revenue through its app store.
To maintain its one-stop shop for apps, Google paid smartphone makers a cut of their revenue in exchange for keeping the Play Store its exclusive gateway.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Our staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)