monopoly money - fortnite gets the w against google
Epic Games, developer and publisher of the phenomenally successful video game juggernaut Fortnite, has just won a landmark case against Google, as a jury found that 'Google turned its Play Store app platform and Billing Service into an illegal monopoly’ quoting The Verge. Naturally, Google will appeal the result and we’ll be back here in a few months but its unlikely that the appeal will work. Particularly because Google was up to some shady shit prior the trial, destroying potential evidence which is something of a no-no according to the judge, who knew?
To quickly summarise; Google owns and operates the Android operating system (separate to the rest of the business, in particular the Pixel division, but not really) and the Google Play Store is an integral part of that OS. Google makes money when you spend using the Google Play Store, and as such there was an incentive for them to protect it from competition. The jury found that Google was actively quashing other app stores from running on Android through the targeted application of revenue sharing deals which is BS corporate-talk for paying companies off to give up on their dreams of running a mobile app store. The Argument being that Google was in a special position to be doing these things, and exploited that opportunity. They also absolutely did not play fair with the apps themselves, giving special treatment to big apps like Spotify and Netflix, again to quieten any demands that may exist for different app stores with different revenue sharing terms. Stifling this stuff is what monopolies do, and the jury were not having it.
It took a company the size of Epic Games to say enough was enough and drag Google to court. Epic were not seeking damages, but instead just wanted to make a very loud, very public point about big companies acting like dickheads. And they won. Wahey!
So Google get a very public slap and Sunder Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet (Google’s parent company) could well have to step down but we don’t care about that. What we do care about is whether this establishes any kind of precedent for app stores, and the web in general. Every day its getting harder and harder to be a big tech monopolist; between court cases and a utterly rabid European Union, the walled gardens raised by the early web-marketplace movers like Apple and Google are starting to get torn down. Its even possible we might be heading back to the days of the open web, with all its chaos, uncertainty and excitement. Only time will tell.
