Is the end of a monopoly coming soon? A federal judge in California ordered Google on Monday, October 7, to authorize the installation of platforms that compete with the Google Play Store, its application store. The group has announced its intention to appeal.
This sentence was handed down almost ten months after a jury found Google guilty of monopolizing the application distribution market on Android, its mobile operating system. The video game publisher Epic Games was behind the procedure.
San Francisco Magistrate James Donato gave the technology giant eight months to comply with his decision, that is, at the beginning of July 2025, because the ruling will take effect on 1Ahem November.
Once the Alphabet subsidiary has modified Android and the Google Play Store to allow downloads from other app stores, it will have to leave the door open for three years.
As soon as the ruling was announced, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney announced that the publisher would launch its own app store in 2025. “Without Google’s scare messages and 30% reductions” that the technology giant is subtracting from the income of application creators.
Google will appeal
This launch will only take place in the United States, because the decision published on Monday only refers to American territory. “The legal and regulatory battle will continue around the world”said Tim Sweeney.
The deadline set by the federal judge gives three years to smartphone developers, operators and manufacturers to “build an ecosystem of sufficient size so that Google can no longer stop it”at the end of this first phase, explained the head of Epic Games.
“These changes would present risks to data protection and user security”Google reacted in a press release, announcing that it would appeal. “If they satisfy Epic, they will cause a series of unintended consequences that will be unfavorable to American consumers, developers and equipment manufacturers”assured the company based in Mountain View (California).
Google specified that it will ask the courts to suspend the execution of the sentence pending the examination of the appeal.
