Epic v. Google: everything we learned in Fortnite court
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That’s the second argument from Epic’s second economist, and we’re looking at a slide listing basic “competitive harms”: foreclosure, high prices, and “innovation and quality.”
On the first point, foreclosure: “When Google doesn’t have to compete with other payment solution providers, they lack the incentive to offer the innovations that are needed,” says Tadelis.
On the second, high prices: “If the tie were severed, could they charge 15–30 percent for a payment solution? And the answer to that is no,” he says.
“Anyone who is profit maximizing would not choose to pay a 30 percent fee when they could pay a 9 or 10 or 6 percent fee,” he adds.
We’re looking at a slide showing Google’s average in-app purchase fee (29.4 percent as calculated by Tadelis) versus the 5.5 to 10 percent charged by PayPal, Stripe, Square, and Paddle.
