Google on Monday will try to protect a lucrative piece of its internet empire while facing the biggest US antitrust trial in a quarter century. A 10-person jury will decide in San Francisco whether Google’s digital payment processing system in Play Store, which distributes apps for Android phones, has illegally pushed up prices for consumers and developers.
The trial before US District Judge James Donato is scheduled to last until just before Christmas and include testimony from longtime Google executive Sundar Pichai, who is now CEO of the company’s parent, Alphabet Inc.
Pichai recently took the witness stand in Washington DC during an antitrust trial pitting Google’s long-running dominance of internet search against the US Justice Department’s attempt to undercut it on the grounds that the company has been abusing its power to stifle competition and innovation.
The case is brought by Epic Games, maker of the popular Fortnite video game, where earlier in 2021, has lost a similar trial focused on many of the same issues in Apple’s iPhone app store. Although a federal judge sided with Apple on most fronts, the outcome opened a potential crack
in Apple’s digital fortress built around iPhone. The judge and an appeals court both determined Apple should allow apps to provide links to other payment options, a change that could undermine the 15 per to 30 per cent commissions that both Apple and Google collect on digital purchases made within a mobile app. Apple is appealing that part of the ruling to the US Supreme Court, where Epic is also challenging most elements of the case that it lost. Epic is now taking aim at Google’s commission system, even though Android software is already set up to allow other stores, such as Samsung’s installed on its phones, distribute apps that work on the operating system.
Even so, Epic maintains that Google still maintains a stranglehold on the Android app ecosystem and the payment system attached to it— and has paid hundreds of millions of dollars to stifle competition.
