By Mike Scarcella
(Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Monday ordered Alphabet Inc’s (NASDAQ:) subsidiary Google to overhaul its mobile app business to give Android users more options to download apps and pay for transactions within them, following a jury ruling last year in the game “Fortnite.” “Maker of epic games.
The injunction issued by US District Judge James Donato in San Francisco outlined changes Google must make to open its profitable app store, Play, to greater competition, including making Android apps available from competing sources.
Donato’s order said that for three years, Google cannot ban the use of in-app payment methods and must allow users to download competing third-party Android app platforms or stores.
The order restricts Google from making payments to device makers to pre-install its app store and from sharing revenue generated by the Play Store with other app distributors.
Google and Epic did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Alphabet shares fell nearly 2% after the ruling. Donato said Epic and Google should create a three-person technical committee to implement and monitor the injunction. Epic and Google each get a choice, and those two will choose the third person.
Epic’s lawsuit, filed in 2020, accused Google of monopolizing how consumers access apps on Android devices and how they pay for in-app transactions.
The Cary, North Carolina-based company convinced a jury in December 2023 that Google illegally stifled competition through its controls on app distribution and payments, paving the way for Donato’s order.
Google urged Donato to reject Epic’s proposed fixes, arguing that they are costly, overly restrictive and could harm consumer privacy and security. The judge mostly rejected those arguments during a hearing in August.
“You’re going to end up paying something to put the world back together after it turns out you’re a monopoly,” he told Google’s lawyers.
In a separate antitrust case in Washington, US District Judge Amit Mehta ruled on August 5 in favor of the US Department of Justice, saying that Google had an illegal monopoly on Internet search and had spent billions to become the default search engine on the Internet.
Google also began a trial in September in Virginia federal court in a Justice Department lawsuit over its dominance of the ad technology market.
Google denied the allegations in all three cases.
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