Epic and Match’s antitrust case against Google heads to jury trial on November 6 • TechCrunch

A date has been set for a trial by jury in a significant antitrust case against Google involving its alleged abuses of power in the Android app market. Fortnite maker Epic Games

and dating app giant Match Group, joined by over three dozen state attorneys general, have accused Google of unfairly leveraging its market dominance and harming competition

through its Google Play Store terms and practices. In particular, the plaintiffs take issue with the commissions Google requires on app sales and in-app purchases as well as the

control Google has over Android app distribution in general. The case will now proceed to a jury trial on November 6, 2023, a judge in the Northern District of California has

ruled. Epic Games began its path to suing the app store giants, Apple and Google, back in 2020 when it introduced a direct payment option in Fortnite to its iOS and Android apps,

prompting Apple and Google to boot the mobile game from their respective app stores. Epic then sued both companies for antitrust abuses. Apple largely won its case, but both sides

appealed the ruling as Epic still wants Apple held accountable for anticompetitive practices, while Apple didn’t want to change its terms to permit third-party payments, as the

district judge had decided would be required. In an appeal hearing in November, the DoJ voiced its concerns over how the lower court had misinterpreted U.S. antitrust law — a

signal of the increased interest the U.S. government has in the prosecutions of the tech giants. (The DoJ is also said to be in the early stages of filing its own suit against

Apple.) Epic’s claims against Google, while largely similar to Apple’s, have to take into account the differences with Google’s app distribution platform. Unlike Apple, which

prevents any other means of installing apps on iOS devices outside its own App Store, Google permits apps to be sideloaded on Android devices. In fact, Epic Games chose to

distribute Fortnite to users outside the Play Store when it launched on Android, and after the game was kicked out of Google Play for terms violations. To aid its case, Epic has

focused part of its antitrust claim on the other alleged means Google used to maintain market power, including an internal program where Google paid game developers hundreds of

millions of dollars in incentives to keep their games on the Play Store. Google, however, maintains the program is “proof that Google Play competes fairly with numerous rivals

for developers,” it said. Match Group had also sued Google over its Play Store practices, accusing Google of charging developers “exorbitant fees.” Google shot back, saying