Google is accused of trying to preemptively suppress Samsung’s Galaxy Store and prevent it from becoming a viable competitor to its own Play Store. This is an antitrust lawsuit filed by a coalition of attorneys general in more than 30 states. The lawsuit accuses Google of illegal attempts to control the distribution of Android applications. The lawsuit also claims that Google bribed app developers to prevent them from listing in other Android app stores.
These allegations challenged one of Google’s core defenses of its policy, that is, unlike Apple’s iOS rules, the Android system allows both competing application stores and direct sideloading of applications. The lawsuit claims that this openness is a cover because although customers can technically choose where to get their apps, Google’s business practices have prevented the emergence of a viable app store competitor.
When Samsung began to transform its own app store, the Samsung Galaxy Store, Google felt threatened, the lawsuit said, describing Google’s approach to competing stores as it needs to preemptively quell the threat.
The lawsuit outlines a series of strategies that Google allegedly used to prevent the Samsung Store from becoming a viable competitor. It claimed that Google used revenue-sharing agreements with Android phone manufacturers to “directly prohibit” pre-installing some other app stores and that it “directly tried to pay Samsung to give up its relationship with top developers, and through Samsung, Galaxy Stores are reducing competition.”
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In addition to trying to kill Samsung’s app store directly, the Attorney General also claimed that Google cooperates with app developers to encourage them not to distribute their apps outside of the Play Store while imposing restrictions on how they can distribute their apps. In the heavily edited part of the document, the Attorney General believes that most of Google’s response is a “direct consequence” of Epic Games choosing to release “Fortnite” outside of the Google Play Store.
In a blog post published shortly after the lawsuit, Google’s senior director of public policy Wilson-White called this a meaningless lawsuit that ignores the openness of the Android system. If you don’t find the app you’re looking for in Google Play, you can choose to download the app from a competitor’s app store or directly from the developer’s website.
We don’t impose restrictions like other mobile operating systems, Wright wrote And added that manufacturers and operators can choose to pre-install other app stores, and most Android devices have “two or more app stores” when they leave the factory.
Epic Games filed similar allegations in a lawsuit against the search giant last year, claiming that Google was trying to suppress competitors’ application distribution methods. It claimed that Google forced OnePlus to abandon the deal to pre-install the special “Fortnite” launcher on its phones and prevented LG from pre-installing the Epic Games app on its devices.
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