36 states of the USA and its capital, Washington DC filed a new lawsuit against Google, considering that its control over the Android application store constitutes a monopoly.
This new round of the fight between politicians and big technology comes just over a week after a judge dismissed a federal government lawsuit against Facebook for lack of evidence. That lawsuit was in Washington and the current one, led by Utah, North Carolina, Tennessee, New York, Arizona, Colorado, Iowa and Nebraska, is being processed in a federal court in California.
Google's lawyers are going to win the fees. In addition to this lawsuit, he has to face one filed in October by the Department of Justice and 14 states where his domain in mobile search is questioned; another on the same subject presented by 38 states in December; and a third lawsuit from 15 states related to the advertising market.
From the company they said that If demand prospers, costs for small developers will increase, their ability to innovate and compete will diminish.r, and it will make apps across the Android ecosystem less secure for consumers.
According to them:
This lawsuit is not about helping the little one or protecting consumers, ”the company said. “It's about powering a handful of big app developers who want the benefits of Google Play without paying for it.
I am a fan of the free market and I prefer to see politicians as far away as possible. But, what do you want me to tell you, I read Google's statement and felt the need to check if I still had the wallet.
New lawsuit against Google What is it about?
Those responsible for the lawsuit they want to avoid the entry into force next September of the new commission required by Google. 30% of the goods or services sold on Google Play.
On the subject also there are lawsuits brought by big companies like Epic Games, the developer of Fornite and class actions on behalf of individual developers and consumers.
Both these lawsuits and the one presented by the states, will be processed before Judge James Donato. And, in this case there are no differences between Democrats and Republicans. Donato was appointed by Obama, but among the participating prosecutors there are Republicans.
The plaintiffs maintain that Although there are other app stores, Google made sure that none of them can exceed more than 5% of the market. Thus, it refuses to allow other app stores to be downloaded from the official Play Store, which comes pre-installed on all Android smartphones. It also refuses to allow other app stores to buy advertising on its search engine or on the YouTube video streaming platform that it also owns.
Prosecutors cite the way that Google tried to prevent Samsung whose devices have 60% of the US market for Android devices) from launching its own store. According to them, Google would have offered Samsung an undisclosed sum of money in advance and a part of the income obtained from its Play Store in exchange for the Korean manufacturer not signing exclusive distribution agreements with developers.
As far as is known, the negotiations were unsuccessful, but they did managed to prevent developers from leaving the app store or inviting consumers to download updates from other sources. Not satisfied with this, in addition to making it difficult to download software from other locations, Google would have spread false information to scare users.
The new lawsuit received enthusiastic support from the Coalition for App Fairness, a group that includes Epic, Spotify and Match among others:
Meghan DiMuzio, executive director of the group stated:
App stores have been given a free pass to abuse their dominant position in the market for too long.
We will have to wait to see what happens with Epic's lawsuit against Google that begins in April of next year
What Samsung had to do if it wanted to disengage from Google's policies is to have supported at least one of the projects that forking android, so that other mobile developers would follow its example, allowing a simple one of the preferred software store of the user at the time of purchase or that from the store itself by default it is allowed to install other app stores and then disable the one that comes by default. If they had happened, cases like this would not end up in the courts since the greatest ambition of politicians is not only to win more money or votes, but the desire to regulate even more.