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U.S. antitrust agents have launched their first challenge at a mobile app store, accusing Google of overload developers who come through the Play Store integrated into their Android operating system.
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in San Francisco federal court, is the fourth against the search giant in the United States in less than a year and the first to be made with smartphone platforms in the center of the current consumer technology.
So far, Google has faced less public criticism than Apple for the charges it charges mobile app developers, along with restrictions that prevent developers from shunning charges. The Apple App Store has been the subject of a big profile private antitrust case of Epic Games.
The case, led by Utah and which includes 35 other US states and the District of Columbia, accused Google of “illegally restricting trade and maintaining monopolies” in the Android app distribution market, as well as in the Android app payment market.
Google denied the allegations and said it was “wrong” for Android developers and users to be forced to use the Play Store. It also indirectly attacked Apple for its own more restrictive app store policies.
In a blog post on Wednesday afternoon, Wilson White, Google’s chief public policy director, said it was “strange that a group of state attorneys general chose to file a lawsuit to attack a system that provides more openness and options than others “.
States could face a tough battle to convince a court that the search giant has a dominant position in the way mobile apps are sold. Android accounts for only 46% of the smartphone market in the United States, compared to Apple’s 53% of iOS, according to StatCounter. The difficulty of demonstrating market dominance is seen as one of the most important hurdles for Epic’s case against Apple.
As a sign of the challenge that US regulators have to deal with technology giants under existing antitrust laws, a case against Facebook by the Federal Trade Commission was ousted by a U.S. judge last week, in part because regulators had failed to properly define the market that would supposedly dominate the company. The EU has decided that it needs an ambitious new law, the Digital Markets Act, to break the power of dominant digital platforms, including smartphone app stores.
To make their case, states argue that the Android smartphone platform is part of a market for free licensed mobile operating systems, which excludes Apple’s iOS from the image. Android accounts for 99% of this market and Google has employed “anti-competitive tactics to decrease and discourage competition in the distribution of Android applications,” allowing it to charge an “extravagant” commission of up to 30%, according to the complaint.
Google has always maintained that selling apps on Android is more open to competition than Apple’s rival iPhone platform, as it allows rival app stores alongside its own Play Store.
White also challenged states ’attempt to draw a narrow definition of the app market to defend their case, saying it“ completely ignores the competition we face from other platforms, such as the incredibly successful app store. of Apple “.
Justifying their attempt to define Google’s operating system as virtually a market in itself and not in direct competition with the iPhone, the states said in their complaint, “Android is the only viable operating system available for licensing. by mobile device manufacturers who market and sell their devices to American consumers. ”
Google had taken advantage of this to make illegal profits from its own Play Store, they added, shutting down other Android app distribution channels and forcing developers to use the Play Store payment system, causing automatic commissions.
The decision by the states to take Google and not Apple probably reflects the fact that the investigation was more advanced, and it is likely that complaints will eventually be filed against the app stores of U.S. state-owned companies and federal regulators, he said. Paul Gallant, Cowen analyst. In any case, Google is more “developer-friendly” than Apple, as it allows rival app stores and also allows Android users to load side-by-side apps or download them directly instead of using a store app. applications, he added.
Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes said Google had used its “monopolistic power and hyper-dominant market position to illegally take advantage of billions of dollars added from smaller companies, competitors and more consumers.” beyond what should be paid. “
In December, nearly 40 attorneys general sued the company over several allegations that they had illegally abused its search monopoly. This was followed by a complaint by a smaller group of Republican states about the company’s advertising technology. Google is also facing a complaint related to the Justice Department’s search.
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