Epic v. Google: everything we learned in Fortnite court
See all Stories
I haven’t seen enough of the docs myself in court to say for sure — only a taste — but Epic’s economist is telling us about Google documents that show the company feared its Play Billing would be displaced.
“Google was well aware that severing the tie would put price pressure on payment solutions they could provide,” he says. We saw a brief snippet of a document showing a multi-step process where other payment providers would rise up to fill a mandatory Play Billing vacuum.
He says another chunk of the document showed that Google saw benefits in “laddering up,” or using its power to become dominant in a subsequent area — like how Netflix’s DVD business became a launchpad for its streaming business, which became a launchpad for its own TV and movie productions, he says.
