More from Epic v. Google: everything we learned in Fortnite court
Google Play
How we operate our google play store
The service fees we charge developers
Various issues associated with it
“That’s part of my understanding, I’m not a legal expert.”
“You understand Google did nothing to make sure Google employees were chatting on the record, right?” asks Epic attorney Lauren Moskowitz.
“And you understand Google relied on individual users to decide whether the subjects they were discussing were relevant,” she asks in a follow-up.
Pichai says he relied on his legal and compliance teams. The buck does not stop with Pichai here, then; Kent Walker can’t get here soon enough.
Epic is grilling Pichai for the last time(s) now Google is basically done with him — and he just suggested that Netflix could be sideloaded before (seemingly) realizing his mistake.
“Do you believe that Netflix offers the Netflix app for sideloading by users on Android?”
“I do not recall them doing so,” he admits.
Now, we’re debating if he knows how many steps it takes to install an app on a PC versus an Android phone after downloading from a website. He repeatedly says he doesn’t know exactly how many steps any given thing takes but admits it probably takes fewer steps on a PC.
On Android, he suggests it may only take a few steps, particularly if a user has already turned on Unknown Sources.
Is Epic right when it says it’s trying to stifle choice, asks Google’s lawyer. I think you can guess Pichai’s answer.
“Our mission is to provide access to information, to make it universally accessible and useful,” says Pichai.
“Android is unprecedented, there’s never been a free and open operating system that’s reached two and a half billion users,” he adds.
“It can install malware on your phone... it can really compromise your safety, very significantly,” says Pichai of unknown, sideloaded apps on Android.
“We’re trying to strike a balance. Apple’s iPhone only allows the App Store, but we believe in choice, so on Android we allow you to sideload and install additional applications.”
“It’s like a seatbelt in a car, we are adding the protections so you can use it safely.”
“The people on mobile phones rely on app stores to discover applications. It is the primary source of discovery, it has mobile APIs so people can actually build applications, it provides the safety and security for users so they can trust those applications.” He goes on to add that it provides payments and more.
“It offers substantially more value,” Pichai concludes.
Today, the Chrome Web Store only offers extensions, he says.
He’s been his usual self the entire time so far: soft-spoken, respectful, not argumentative, just occasionally trying to explain more. He’s easily the most polished witness on the stand so far in this case.
He’s also the only one I’ve seen looking at and gesturing to the jury, like he did a few minutes ago: “Why would you go to the Chrome store and type in Netflix when you could just use it?” he said, pointing out that the Chrome Web Store couldn’t justify as high a fee as the Play Store on Android.
He says his legal hold instructions were:
I was instructed to preserve documents be it email, my documents on my computer or physical documents, and not to use chat regarding the litigation matter, and if I used chat, to turn history on.
Did you follow these instructions? “Yes I did.”
And, Pichai and Google say, Epic’s smoking gun “chat history off” request was about a “Cloud Next Keynote” event. Nothing to do with Android, Play, or this lawsuit, he attests.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai admitting one of Google’s many failed tablets over the years in order to help build a market definition that Google competes with Apple rather than other Android-based companies.
Pichai also says that “Samsung gets to keep the profit from these phones” and that “we give revshare not just to Samsung, but to telecom carriers in certain cases who take the product to market, which is not true in Apple’s case.”
He says Android makes smartphones more affordable than Apple does as well.
Part of Pichai’s answer to a question about how Google helps the Android ecosystem compete with Apple. The first part began, “We’ve made it rich for developers to write applications.”
Pichai says (after being led) that the board of directors listening to presentations like the one about Play’s operating profit “has full context.”
“They understand that this is the view from a Google Play-based standpoint, because that’s the only cost the Google Play team can directly control.”
Google has begun its questioning of its own CEO by pointing out the value it has brought to the world and his own relatively humble background growing up in Chennai in the south of India.
He got to mention Android Go, an effort to bring Android phones to more of the world, and how Google Play efforts include the “security and safety of the platform.”
He’s now suggesting developers on Google Play pay 15 percent or less, and yet: “We invest 10s of thousands of engineers to build Android, which we provide free of charge to OEMs around the world and I think the model serves our mission.”
In a July 2020 presentation to the Alphabet board of directors, Pichai confirmed today, Google Play had a 65 percent operating margin, for a $4.4 billion operating profit in H1 2020. That was 33 percent up compared to H1 2019.
Play was “one of the world’s most largest commerce platforms with >250M people transacting in a year, and also one of the most profitable businesses (>60% margin) and a key contributor the Alphabet P/L,” a presentation slide reads.
“We definitely had concerns at that time yes,” says Pichai, after Epic’s attorney brings up how he penned a 2009 blog post suggesting Microsoft had an unfair advantage with Internet Explorer because it was tied to the operating system.
Yet Google requires effectively all Android phones to preinstall Google Play, set it on the default homescreen, and keep users from deleting it with its MADA contracts.
Earlier today, Epic asked, “Currently today, there’s not a single OEM selling a phone that hasn’t signed the MADA, right?” Pichai answered yes — while noting some OEMs have tried in the past.
Epic pointed out that they tried and failed. “Because consumers value what we provide with the MADA,” Pichai answered.
Hey! I’m Sean Hollister, and I’ve been live in the courtroom for Epic v. Google since Monday of last week. What’s going on? These might help:
👉 Our bingo cards: so far, we’ve hit MADA, RSA, Sideloading, Right on the Homescreen, OEMs, Fake Privilege, and CHATS!
On October 28th, 2013, Google’s Joe Marini privately suggested that “Google isn’t doing a very good job of promoting the web store,” writing:
Unlike other app platforms such as IOS and Android, where their respective stores are the “only game in town” to get content for those platforms, it is entirely possible to live a happy life as a Chrome user without ever having to visit the store. As a result, we have to work harder to draw users in, but our existing marketing efforts don’t do anything to mention the store.
Will Epic try to suggest this influenced Google’s later thinking? We’ll find out after a 15-minute break.
It seems Epic is trying to draw a difficult link between 1) Google not having a scary “Unknown Sources” install flow for its Chrome Web Store — and offering a low 5 percent fee — and 2) what’s happening with Android sideloading.
“This is apples and oranges, right?” says Pichai. “There was no downloading of a web application; you would just go to the site and use it.” This is basically true: web apps are a thing.
We’re watching an ancient video of young Pichai announcing that web store’s payments functionality. (He used to be in charge of Chrome, before he rose up the ranks.)
“That’s right. We don’t distinguish between the URLs,” says Google’s CEO.
We’re talking about sideloading friction, which Epic argues (and Google admitted internally) kept a sideloaded version of Fortnite from being financially viable.
Pichai says yes, its Unknown Sources warnings do create friction for those who want to sideload apps on Android instead of downloading them from the Play Store.
Check “sideloading” on your bingo card.
Google’s CEO is not trying to deny or steer that it shares 36 percent of mobile search revenue with Apple in exchange for iPhone default search and pays as much as $18 billion for it in total a year.
Epic did not get Pichai to admit that it pays Samsung half as much for search defaults at 16 percent. Pichai says that for Samsung phones, Google pays the carrier, too.
That’s Google CEO Sundar Pichai, changing his answer to the court about whether OEMs would really put Google Play right on the homescreen if they weren’t contractually obligated by Google’s MADA contracts. He also got in a mention of competing with Apple.
In an earlier deposition, he told the court they might place it elsewhere. “I would assume so, yes.”
Epic: “You have no evidence that Facebook was trying to launch an app distribution platform on Android?”
Pichai: “Not that I was concerned about.”
Also, check “MADA” and “Right on the homescreen” on your bingo card; Moskowitz said the first, and something that’s so close to the second that I’ll allow it.
Pichai has been presented with a typed summary of a meeting between him and other Android leaders on April 16th, 2013 — where he suggested the following (as paraphrased by Google that week):
Should we revisit the rules, now we aren’t an upstart open source os? Not that we should stop anything we are doing right now, but over next two weeks take the time to step back and look at the overall situation. Nightmare scenario is we lose control of Android ... can’t take what we have here for granted.”
These were some of Android leader Hiroshi Lockheimer’s two cents:
How do we prioritize and sequence thing (sic) so we don’t lose control. The world is a different place back in 2007, and now there are companies that want to take our ecosystem away.”
We’re not 100 percent sure what Epic attorney Moskowitz is driving at quite yet, but she’s repeatedly asking Pichai questions about how OEMs work — and if smartphone manufacturing OEMs have the ability to preinstall their own apps.
So far, he’s saying yes. It’s too early for anybody to have a BINGO quite yet, but we’re moving swiftly!
Pichai continues to insist that it was a glitch.
Epic is moving on to different questions now.
Pichai roundabout agrees with Epic lawyer Moskowitz’s question that, as far as he knew, Google was preserving all its relevant chats following legal holds.
Now, he’s being presented with that time he asked for history off himself (see below), meaning that the rest of the conversation was automatically deleted after 24 hours due to Pichai’s request. He says he was working on a document for an external event.
Moskowitz is pointing out that Pichai didn’t just ask for history off — he also seemingly attempted to delete his request, which makes him look guilty.
He says he didn’t recall deleting it and is attempting to suggest it was a glitch.
