Google has announced the terms of the settlement they reached after suffering a loss to Epic Games in a significant antitrust litigation. The case was initiated in 2021 by New York state attorney general, Letitia James, after claims of misconduct in Google’s app store practices.
The lawsuit stated that the tech company had unlawfully dominated the market of Android mobile apps and overcharged its consumers.
The settlement was first declared in September, but Google stated this Monday that it would pay $700 million, as well as modify their app store policies to allow app developers to circumvent Google’s financial interception, in which it would take a 15-30% commission of the sale and charge buyers directly.
$630 million of the settlement’s total will be distributed among consumers, as stated in the court approved plan, and the remaining $70 million will be paid out between the states.
The tech giant also stated that it would permit users to download apps from developers without having to go through the Google Play Store, and that it would allow these app developers to mediate their own prices.
Google allegedly plans to use this settlement as a model for addressing other issues of antitrust with its app store policies, including its conflict with Fortnite creator, Epic Games.
The jury in the lawsuit against Epic Games and Google ruled in favor of the video game company and found that Google had violated antitrust laws by having an illegal, and unjust monopoly over its Google Play store market.
“While we are challenging that verdict and our case with Epic is far from over, we remain committed to continually improving Android and Google Play,” Google claimed in a statement within its Monday announcement.
This is just one of the various antitrust accusations that Google has been the target of, as they are currently involved in a lawsuit with the Department of Justice, which filed against the tech corporation for taking away the competition in the online search engine business.
It was also unintentionally disclosed by Google back in November that they paid Apple 36% of its safari search revenue so that they could remain the prominent search engine on the browser.
These factors do not help Google in the long run of these antitrust suits.
