Epic, Google Weigh in Ahead of Antitrust Trial

Epic Games and Google will face off in federal court on Monday in an antitrust trial that mirrors the Fortnite maker’s battle with Apple. The charge: Google is abusing its monopoly power in the Android apps market by charging exorbitant fees to use the Google Play Store and forcing app developers to using its own payment system.

Epic ultimately fared poorly in its case against Apple despite winning big on a key point of its argument, with a federal judge rejecting its other claims while practically begging the firm to introduce more evidence. But the Google case could unfold differently. It’s been heard by a jury, for starters, and it’s likely they will be more open to Epic’s allegations of abuse. Epic also has more evidence against Google, which pays developers to keep them in its payment system. And Google’s abusive reputation will likely play a bigger role in this trial since the online giant is currently in a separate antitrust trial with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and is involved in several antitrust cases in the EU.

Whatever happens, both companies have spoken up ahead of the trial, Epic somewhat informally and Google quite formally.

“Epic will go to trial against Google alone,” Epic founder and CEO Tim Sweeney tweeted in late October when Match.com settled its similar antitrust case against Google. “We reject Google’s so-called ‘user choice billing,’ in which Google controls, surveils, and taxes transactions between users and developers.”

Google, meanwhile, has gone public with a lengthy post to its Keyword blog.

“Epic argues that it is forced to distribute its apps through Google Play and that options available to developers are too restrictive,” Google vice president of government affairs & public policy Wilson White writes. “These claims are baseless. Android enables developers to distribute through multiple app stores or directly to users through the web, bypassing app stores altogether. The truth is that Epic simply wants all the benefits that Android and Google Play provide without having to pay for them. And it wants to strip away critical security and privacy protections that keep billions of users safe from things like unfair subscription practices and dishonest billing, for which Epic itself has faced record fines.”

Google’s view is that the Play Store has competition in the form of the Samsung Galaxy Store and Amazon Appstore, not to mention Apple’s iPhone-specific App Store. That developers can distribute their apps directly to users through side-loading. That the Play Store is not just about payment processing because it also offers “an array of tools and services” to help developers grow their businesses. That the Play Store has the lowest fees “of any major app store.” That its piloting of a “user choice billing” system means it now offers developers a choice of payment options. And that the changes Epic wants would somehow make Android less safe.

That each of these claims is easily debunked is going to make for an interesting trial. But Mr. Sweeney addressed part of his company’s stance on these topics when he was asked what Google would need to do for Epic to settle.

He replied, “Don’t interfere with competing stores through technical countermeasures, carrier/[hardware maker] agreements, or Google Play anti-store policies; don’t impede or gatekeep competing payment systems for in-app purchases; don’t impose Google fees on top of third-party payment services.”

There is a similarly nuanced point to be made about each of the “facts” that Google lists in its blog post, and I suspect that debate will constitute the meat of the coming trial.