Google says Epic’s Play Store demands are too much and selfish

Epic Games won his antitrust case against Google in December, when a federal jury found that the latter violated US antitrust laws with regard to how it manages the Play Store. A few months later, the game developer presented its list of demands, which if implemented blow up the Play Store. Now, Google has filed a preliminary injunction telling the court that no, it won’t give Epic what it wants without a fight because the company’s requests “go far beyond the record of judgment.”

The solutions presented by Epic would require the court to not only create a global regulatory regime to set prices for apps, Google wrote in the filing seen by Engadget, but also micromanage “a highly complex and dynamic ecosystem” used by billions of consumers. and app developers around the world. If you remember, Epic wants Google to open Android to third-party app stores and make its app catalog available to those stores. He also wants restrictions on pre-installed apps to be banned and prohibit any activity by Google that encourages third parties.

Google said that bowing to all of these demands would “effectively prevent [it] from competing,” which in turn would negatively affect Android users and developers. Epic’s proposals only benefit Epic, Google said in its filing, and will harm other developers by depriving them of control over where their app is distributed Manufacturers will no longer be able to take advantage of the partnerships that Google normally offers, while users must deal with additional security and privacy risks.

The company also criticized Epic for the “vagueness” of its proposed injunction, which would require repeated and continuous intervention by the courts. Likewise, Epic’s demands would apparently require the court to micromanage Google’s business.

“Epic’s demands would harm the privacy, security, and overall experience of consumers, developers, and device manufacturers,” Wilson White, vice president of government affairs and public policy at Google, told Engadget in a statement. “Not only does their proposal go far beyond the scope of the recent U.S. trial verdict – which we will challenge – it is also unnecessary given the agreement we reached last year with the state attorneys general of every state and several territories. Vigorously defend our right to a sustainable business model that allows us to keep people safe, partner with developers to innovate and grow their businesses, and maintain a thriving Android ecosystem for everyone.”

Google said that if Epic truly wants to promote competition rather than create “an unfair, court-supervised advantage for itself,” then it would draw inspiration from its settlement with state officials who previously accused the company of abusing its dominance. in distributing Android applications. . Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney was, unsurprisingly, dissatisfied with this agreement, tweeting at the time: “If Google ends its payments monopoly without imposing a Google tax on third-party transactions, we will make a deal and be friends with Google in its new era. But if the deal just compensates the other plaintiffs, leaving the tax of Google in place, we will continue to fight. Consumers will only benefit if enforcement of antitrust laws not only opens up markets but also restores price competition.”