Google asks 9th Circuit for emergency stay, says Epic ruling ‘is dangerous’

The company says the imminent deadline to implement changes gives it little time to try to mitigate ‘serious risks.’

by Jay Peters and Sean Hollister

Oct 17, 2024, 1:32 AM UTC

Photo illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos by Philip Pacheco, Bloomberg, Getty Images

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Google has asked the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to halt the imminent changes required from Judge James Donato’s recent ruling in Epic v. Google. The company already asked Judge Donato to do the same, but it’s not waiting till Friday to find out if the judge who vowed to “tear the barriers down” will let Google press pause on his ruling.

The ruling, which Google has appealed, would force Google to distribute third-party app stores within Google Play, no longer require Google Play Billing for apps distributed via Google Play, and more, with many of those changes ordered to begin on November 1st — just over two weeks from today.

But echoing many of Google’s arguments during the district court case, which Judge Donato rejected as insufficient, the company now argues that the order “threatens Google Play’s ability to provide a safe and trusted user experience.”

“This wouldn’t just hurt Google – this would have negative consequences for Android users, developers and device manufacturers who have built thriving businesses on Android, writes Google’s Lee-Anne Mulholland, VP of regulatory affairs, in a fact sheet distributed to journalists.

The fact sheet is bulleted into five different sections, and the section headers give you an idea of Google’s objections:

“Forcing Google to distribute third-party app stores within Google Play harms safety and privacy”
“Handing hundreds of third-party Android app stores access to Google Play’s app catalog reduces developers’ control over app distribution and puts users at risk”
“Linking out from within an app on Google Play to external app downloads is dangerous”
“Removing Play billing as an option reduces important protections and features users rely on”
“Rushing the implementation of remedies will raise risks to users, developers, and device makers”

To get a sense of Google’s actual filing with the court, here’s how it begins:

At the request of a single competitor, Epic Games, the District Court ordered extensive redesigns to Play that will expose 100-million-plus U.S. users of Android devices to substantial new security risks and force fundamental changes to Google’s contractual and business relationships with hundreds of thousands of Google partners. The court gave Google just three weeks to make many of these sweeping changes—a Herculean task creating an unacceptable risk of safety and security failures within the Android ecosystem.

Epic, in a statement, is pushing back on Google’s arguments. “The jury’s verdict and the court’s injunction were clear: Google’s anticompetitive Play Store practices are illegal,” says Epic spokesperson Natalie Muñoz. “Google is merely fear mongering and falsely using security as a pretext to delay the changes mandated by the court. This is Google’s last ditch effort to protect their control over Android and continue extracting exorbitant fees. The court’s injunction must go into effect swiftly so developers and consumers can benefit from competition in the mobile ecosystem.”

You can read the whole fact sheet, and Google’s whole emergency motion, below.

Page 1 of Google 9th Circuit Fact Sheet