While Epic has been contending Google's Play Store is a de facto monopoly that drives up prices for consumers and discourages app makers from creating new products, Google drew a picture of a broad and fiercely competitive market that includes Apple's iPhone app store in addition to the Android alternatives to its Play Store.

The jury's verdict in the case will likely hinge on how the smartphone app market is defined. Google has staunchly defended the commissions as a way to help recoup the huge investments it has poured into building into the Android software that it has been giving away since 2007 to manufacturers to compete against the iPhone and pointed to rival Android app stores such as the one that Samsung installs on its popular smartphones as evidence of a free market.Įpic, though, presented evidence asserting the notion that Google welcomes competition as a pretense, citing the hundreds of billions of dollars it has doled out to companies such as game maker Activision Blizzard to discourage them from opening rival app stores. Just as Apple does for its iPhone app store, Google collects a 15-30% commission from digital transactions completed within apps - a setup that generates billions of dollars annually in profit. The four-week trial included testimony from both Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who sometimes seemed like a professor explaining complex topics while standing behind a lectern because of a health issue, and Epic CEO Tim Sweeney, who painted himself as a video game lover on a mission to take down a greedy tech titan.Įpic alleged that Google has been exploiting its wealth and control of the Android software that powers most of the world's smartphones to protect a lucrative payment system within its Play Store for distributing Android apps.

A federal court jury is poised begin its deliberations in an antitrust trial focused on whether Google's efforts to profit from its app store for Android smartphones have been illegally gouging consumers and stifling innovation.īefore the nine-person jury in San Francisco starts weighing the evidence Monday, the lawyers on the opposing sides of the trial will present their closing arguments in a three-year-old case filed by Epic Games, the maker of the popular Fortnite video game.

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