The future of Google’s app store is at stake in a lawsuit by Fortnite publisher Epic Games. Epic sued Google in 2020 after a fight over in-app purchase fees, claiming the Android operating system’s Google Play store constituted an unlawful monopoly. It wanted Google to make using third-party app stores, sideloaded apps, and non-Google payment processors easier — while Google said its demands would damage Android’s ability to offer a secure user experience and compete with Apple’s iOS.
On December 11th 2023, the jury ruled in Epic’s favor, finding that Google has turned its Google Play app store and Google Play Billing service into an illegal monopoly, answering yes to every question in front of them about Google’s monopoly power, anticompetitive behavior, and the illegal ties between the different parts of its business. Here’s a rough summary of why the jury might have decided that way.
In October 2024, the judge issued his final, potentially monumental decision — cracking the Google Play Store open to rival stores for three years, among many other things. Google has successfully appealed all but one part of that decision. But Google and Epic have proposed a settlement that could reduce Google’s app store fees worldwide, and now, approval is in the court’s hands.
Wondering why Google lost when Apple won? Here’s an attempt to answer that question.
Disclosure: Vox Media, The Verge’s parent company, has filed a lawsuit against Google, seeking damages from its illegal ad tech monopoly.
Follow along with all of our updates below.
- We found Microsoft’s amicus brief about the Xbox mobile game store.
Microsoft’s new gaming boss said the “idea” isn’t dead, pointing onlookers to a legal brief it filed in a case. That case is Epic v. Google, and the brief is an argument that Judge Donato should stay the course and force Google to carry stores like Microsoft’s. There, Microsoft claims it’s put “significant efforts” behind “new consumer offerings” for Android.
Microsoft says the ‘idea’ of an Xbox mobile store ‘is not dead’
Image: MicrosoftMicrosoft first revealed it was building an Xbox mobile gaming store to take on Apple and Google all the way back in 2022. Former Xbox president Sarah Bond even went on stage at a Bloomberg event nearly two years ago and promised the store would launch in July, 2024. Now, it looks like Microsoft has put the project on hold.
Better xCloud developer redphx noticed that the store URL Microsoft had been testing for the past couple of years no longer works. It’s not clear exactly when it disappeared, but the last time the website was updated was nearly a year ago.
Read Article >- Fortnite returns to Google Play globally on March 19th.
The game’s next big season, which will feature Bugs Bunny, launches the same day.
- Epic judge wants experts to weigh in on Google settlement.
Epic and Google are settling, but the US version of the plan still rests in Judge Donato’s hands. He’s asking for “friend of the court” briefs in early April, meaning it’ll be longer before he makes a decision.
- Epic v. Google won’t be going to the Supreme Court — both sides agree to withdraw it.
While Epic v. Google isn’t quite finished in the US, we no longer have to wait and see if the highest court will hear the case. Rule 46.1 reads that if all parties file in writing that a case be dismissed, “the Clerk, without further reference to the Court, will enter an order of dismissal.” That agreement has now happened.
Image: US Supreme Court Tim Sweeney signed away his right to criticize Google’s app store until 2032
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty ImagesEpic CEO Tim Sweeney might be one of the most outspoken people in the history of the world. He fought two of the world’s most valuable and powerful companies almost all the way to the US Supreme Court, insulting them again and again: “crooked,” “deceitful,” “insanely sneaky,” calling Android a “fake open platform,” calling both companies “gangster-style businesses that will do anything they think they can get away with,” telling me how Google’s Project Hug was “an astonishingly corrupt effort at a massive scale.”
But Google has finally muzzled Tim Sweeney. It’s right there in a binding term sheet for his settlement with Google.
Read Article >Here’s how Google describes its fee-reducing Apps Experience and Games Level Up programs
Illustration by Alex Castro / The VergeToday, Google killed its 30 percent app store fee, partially uncoupled Google Play from Google Play Billing after they were declared an illegal monopoly in the US, and much more.
From July, depending on where you live, Google will now generally charge developers 20 percent for in-app purchases, or 10 percent for subscriptions — but it’s also carving out several new categories of app which might pay differently. One of them is the mysterious new “metaverse browsers” category, whose details have been redacted.
Read Article >Epic and Google have signed a special deal for a new class of ‘metaverse’ apps
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney. Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty ImagesEpic Games and Google are burying the hatchet, but documents released today reveal that they aren’t only aligned on how Google is shaking things up for app stores. The two companies have also agreed to terms about a new class of apps that they’re calling “metaverse browsers,” according to a heavily redacted section of a revised binding term sheet.
While the term “metaverse” has largely fallen out of favor — Mark Zuckerberg, for example, is now much more interested in AI — Epic CEO Tim Sweeney has been talking for years about the metaverse and how it might work in the future. (Depending on how you define the concept, Epic’s Fortnite is already arguably one of the biggest versions of a metaverse.) And this actually isn’t the first time there has been a connection with Epic and Google about the metaverse; in court in January, when discussing a secret $800 million Unreal Engine and services deal, Sweeney blurted out that the agreement related to the metaverse.
Read Article >- Take another peek at our big Google Android app store story if it’s been a while since you checked.
I’ve been updating it for hours with bits from court documents, blog posts, email fact-checks, even a quick interview with Google Android boss Sameer Samat and Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney. I’m about done, but I still need to parse the new Games Level Up Program and Apps Experience Program...
- Fortnite is returning to Google Play globally.
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney made the announcement alongside the news of Google’s sweeping Android App Store changes. The game already returned to Google Play in the US in December.
Google isn’t waiting for a settlement — the 30 percent Android app store fee is dead
Photo illustration by Cath Virginia / The VergeIn November, Epic and Google jointly proposed a settlement that would change Android’s fate globally without cracking open Google’s Android monopoly quite the way it otherwise might. Today, Google has decided it’s not waiting for that settlement to be approved: it’s moving forward with many of its proposed changes right now, rolling them out globally through 2027 — and we spoke to the heads of Android and Epic Games about the changes.
By June 30th, Google writes, it will lower most app store fees in the US, UK, and European Economic Area to 20 percent or less, down from 30 percent. By the end of the year, it will launch a “Registered App Stores” program outside of the US, so that you can download and install third-party app stores (like the Epic Games Store) from the web without the friction that Google erected previously.
Read Article >- Epic and Google have withdrawn their proposed settlement and may have a new one momentarily. Stand by for news.
“The parties expect to submit a revised proposal to the Court by March 4, 2026.” That’s today.
Judge Donato seemed extremely skeptical of the previous proposed settlement during the live courtroom proceedings, particularly because Epic and Google had quietly worked out a new $800 million business deal behind the scenes. We’re standing by for the “revised proposal” now.
Image: US District Court - Judge Donato will not approve or reject the Epic v. Google settlement today.
And we’re done! Lawyers for Epic and Google have asked for a few weeks to talk amongst themselves and file one more brief by early March. Judge Donato says yes “just so long as we are clearly duel-tracked and the order is going forward.” He wanted to be sure Google is actually complying, and Google says it is. Epic says the court-ordered technical committee, where Google and Epic must hammer out the details of store-within-a-store and catalog access, is up and running too.
- We have established that Dr. Rose does not know whether it’s important for app stores to go global.
Sweeney, earlier today: “Every store will be able to do a much better job of serving US users if it can reach a worldwide audience.”
Epic’s lead attorney has continued to push on that with Dr. Rose, who says she was not assigned or resourced to explore “all of the fundamental economic issues,” but admits she doesn’t know if other app makers would think the whole world is as important to their business as Sweeney suggests Epic does. (Again, the Epic Google proposed settlement would change things globally, but the current injunction only applies in the US, while Epic and Google continue to fight elsewhere in the world.)
He tried a few other questions with Dr. Rose as well, but I didn’t catch anything particularly interesting. She has now stepped down, and we’re going into Epic and Google’s logistics for the next steps going forward, presumably before the judge gives us his final thoughts for the day.
- Epic CEO Tim Sweeney and lawyers are in a private huddle.
When we return from the short break, Epic’s lead attorney gets to ask Dr. Rose more questions, and the judge has asked he doesn’t use that time to come up with “800 more.” Dr. Bornstein, Epic’s CEO, and both Bornstein and colleague Yonatan Even seemed to be in a tight huddle drafting one or two, though, which Bornstein seemed to jot down. Now, Google lead attorney Glenn Pomerantz is whispering in Bornstein’s ear as well.
- Judge Donato says out loud that he’s skeptical of the Epic v. Google settlement.
“You’ve got a hike to tell me that something has changed so much in the world that I should change that injunction, and I’m not hearing it,” he tells Epic and Google here in the courtroom.
We’re taking a 10-minute break, because the court reporter says she’s already typed 140 pages today and the fingers need a sec. Wow.
- Epic: “Why in the world would you assume the behavior wouldn’t continue unless it were expressly prohibited?”
Epic lead attorney Gary Bornstein is seemingly suggesting that that because the injunction doesn’t specifically stop Google from adding more friction, the proposed settlement where Google removes that friction would be better (by creating explicit programs for registered rival app stores).
Dr. Rose says she isn’t assuming Google’s behavior will stop, but thinks it’s in Google’s best interests not to get hauled back before the court. She says the court has to balance the pluses and minuses of the proposals before it, she’s just here to say that the settlement doesn’t seem to fix the network effects that led to Google’s firm grip over Android apps.
- Epic tries the global argument again, and it’s interesting.
Epic’s lead attorney is asking Dr. Rose whether her analysis took proper account of whether having rival appstores available worldwide on Android might be more helpful than only mandating US app stores. The court’s existing injunction would mandate that rival stores would have the whole catalog of Android apps from day one.
Dr. Rose says “you can go to users and say we have all the apps you want to see when you join our app store, and similarly you can say to app developers that we’re going to have the whole catalog.”
Bornstein: “It does provide immediate access to a very small subset of those users.” But “it’s just the 4-5 percent of Android users who happen to live in this country,” he argues.
Both Dr. Rose and Judge Donato agree that we don’t know how much revenue that 4-5 percent generates. Donato rejects Epic’s offer to bring up a Google witness with a revenue figure, because Epic and Google are now working together and so there’s no lawyer here who can properly cross-examine that witness.
- Epic and Google are asking to depose Dr. Rose, but the judge isn’t going for it.
Google lead attorney Glenn Pomerantz says “it’s a lot” and seemingly wants to go point by point with her on a future date. The judge says they can do it right here and now in the courtroom. Epic lead attorney Gary Bornstein is going first.
- Court economist pokes huge potential holes in Epic economist’s argument.
You’ll have to scroll down in our Epic v. Google StoryStream until I have time to go find the link, but Dr. Rose is showing up Dr. Bernheim’s earlier ideas here.
She says it’s “problematic to assume that Google will go back to the behavior that a jury found violated the antitrust laws” after the current three-year injunction ends, and that Epic could simply come back to the court to say so if it does, and perhaps ask for a three-year extension after the first three years are up. She’s also not sure why Google wouldn’t revert to bad behavior after six years if we’re assuming it would do so after three.
She says the court-ordered technical committee between Google and Epic can enact the other ideas in the settlement if they want. She also says that “decades of analysis in rate regulation” show that Google lowering its app store fees are not a substitute for creating a competitive market.
- Dr. Rose says Epic and Google’s proposed settlement would ‘fall far short’ of fixing things.
She tells the court it’s like a market owner who bars the doors and locks the gates after customers arrive, then a ditch outside fills with water “too deep and wide for anyone to cross.”
“It’s not going to help to tell the market owner to unlock the doors,” she says. “You have to lower the drawbridge for a while.” She says Judge Donato’s original injunction, which forces Google to crack open its app store by letting the apps out, is that drawbridge, and that Epic and Google are now trying to get rid of the drawbridge part.
- We’re back in Epic v. Google with Nancy Rose, an MIT economics professor.
Now that we’re done with Epic’s CEO and Google’s Android boss — both of whom are still in the room — Dr. Rose is here with her thoughts after evaluate the antitrust and economic effects of the proposed settlement. She says the court assigned her to do that.
- Epic judge shortcuts the question about Google’s motivations.
Judge Donato asks Google’s Android boss whether he sees the catalog injunction (which would force Google to share its catalog of Google Play apps with rival stores) as a plus or minus. Samat says it’s a minus, primarily because Google doesn’t want to get blamed by developers and users when there are issues. He says he foresees Google getting caught in the middle between users, developers, and competing stores.
“Is that the only thing you can think of, that a developer might get upset because there’s a store they don’t want to be associated with?” asks Judge Donato. “The minus for Google is that catalog access and hosting rival app stores on Google Play creates competition that didn’t exist before, right?”
I missed getting the whole quote, but Samat says “we were seeking a way of achieving that goal without a fee in the middle.” Samat is done for the day, and we’re all taking another 10-minute break.
- “You want to buy global peace, I get that.”
Judge Donato tells Android boss Sameer Samat that he already understands Google prefers the new proposed settlement to his injunction partly because it would settle litigation around the world. (Samat said he thinks international regulators may take their cues from the settlement too, because they see Epic as an advocate.) But he wants to know Google’s other motivations.
“By my reading of the deal, you are getting a lot, everything from hundreds of millions of payments over six years from one partnership, to Epic who said Google was a fake platform now championing the Android ecosystem [..] you’re getting a big present from Epic, so what are you doing for Epic?”
“Is there anything aside from buying peace globally?”
Epic and Google have a secret $800 million Unreal Engine and services deal
Photo illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos by Philip Pacheco, Bloomberg, Getty ImagesA judge is questioning whether Epic Games and Google are settling their long-running antitrust fight partly because of a previously unannounced partnership involving the Unreal Engine, Fortnite, and Android. In a hearing in San Francisco today, the court revealed that Epic and Google have struck a new deal that apparently includes “joint product development, joint marketing commitment, joint partnerships.” California District Judge James Donato expressed concerns that the agreement — which he indicated would involve Epic “helping Google market Android” and Google newly “using Epic’s core technology” — could have led Epic to soften its demands for changes to the overall Android ecosystem.
Donato allowed Epic and Google to keep most of the details of the plan under wraps. But during the hearing, he quizzed witnesses, including Epic CEO Tim Sweeney and economics expert Doug Bernheim, on how it might impact settlement talks — revealing some hints in the process. “You’re going to be helping Google market Android, and they’re going to be helping you market Fortnite; that deal doesn’t exist today, right?” Donato asked Bernheim, who answered in the affirmative. He also described it as a “new business between Epic and Google.”
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