We have spent five days in a San Francisco courtroom, witnessing the Epic v. Google trial, and have learned a lot about Google’s app store dealings from people who are not well-known to outsiders. On November 14th, we are expecting to hear Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, as he defends Google’s Android empire against antitrust claims from the publisher of Fortnite.
The lawsuit resulted from a feud over in-app purchase fees in 2020. Epic Games, the publisher of Fortnite, filed the lawsuit against Google, arguing that their Google Play Store has a monopoly over apps on the Android operating system. Google, on the other hand, contends that their demands would harm the security of the Android system and hinder its ability to compete with Apple’s iOS. The lawsuit threatens to shape the future of the Play Store, especially if Epic Games achieves its objective.
Epic, representing the plaintiff in the trial, has been trying to portray Google negatively by highlighting seemingly incriminating details. Google’s lawyers, responding in defense, have been arguing that their actions are typical of a company working to provide the best app store and smartphone. The courtroom process has been characterized by Epic’s attempts to simplify events, while Google presents its own complex narrative. As a result, the lawsuit is effectively a battle between simple versus complicated narratives.
During the proceedings, the question of whether Google cut deals with developers specifically to compete against the iPhone, as opposed to protecting its profits, has been repeatedly raised. Google has maintained that it considers Apple to be a competitor and that the quality of a phone and its app store are intertwined. However, Epic has consistently pointed out that Google seldom mentions Apple in internal documents justifying their agreements with developers. The ongoing focus has been on Google’s apparent disregard for Apple and the company’s reliance on verbal communication to express competitive intentions.
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A significant revelation from the trial has been that Google made special secret deals with Spotify and Netflix and potentially other app developers to obtain extremely favorable rates for distributing apps through the Play Store. Epic has suggested that Google’s executives might have had additional secret anticompetitive agreements with other companies, such as Samsung, highlighting the potential breadth of Google’s secret deals.
The issue of deleted chats by Google employees has also garnered attention during the trial. Several Google employees admitted that they allowed internal Google Chat messages to be automatically deleted after 24 hours, despite being advised to preserve evidence. Epic has emphasized the deletion of evidence and alleged that higher-ups at Google were asking colleagues to intentionally “turn history off”. Pichai himself has been implicated in such requests. Judge James Donato, overseeing the case, is holding Google’s chief legal officer accountable and may issue a mandatory jury instruction if Google fails to address the issue satisfactorily.
As the trial continues, the stakes for Google’s future in the app store industry come under increasing scrutiny. Pichai’s upcoming testimony will serve as a pivotal component of the trial, addressing the complex issues of antitrust laws, secret deals, and data preservation practices at Google. The trial is expected to have far-reaching implications, not only for Google’s app store but for the entire industry.
