We’re back to Google suggesting the Galaxy Store side by side on the homescreen with the Google Play Store (as it is on modern Samsung phones) is evidence of competition.
“Those consumers choose the Play Store 83 percent of the time — this is Google winning the competition because it has a better store,” says Kravis.
Now we know why Google made this point earlier in the trial.
Kravis just showed the jury a slide showing all the ways to play Fortnite, including the PC, Nintendo Switch, cloud gaming and more.
“Professor Tucker’s market definition is the only one that accounts for all these other choices,” he says.
“What’s missing from [Epic’s economist’s] charts is all the other choices that consumers and developers have.”
Google says the evidence shows that Google competes with Apple on price, that we’ve repeatedly seen the two lower their service fees to compete with one another. “This is not the behavior of a monopolist,” Kravis tells the jury.
“We don’t dispute that Google competes with other stores on Android,” he says, only that he wants to show that competition extends to Apple. (Epic had repeatedly shown Apple wasn’t listed in Google’s internal documents about app store competitors.)
Kravis spent a decent chunk of Google’s closing argument fighting against the idea that users won’t switch between iOS and Android and ended that section once again suggesting that even if the percentage of switchers is small, the absolute number is large.
He also had a memorable line about the lag we’ve seen between apps appearing on iOS and Android: “What Purnima told you, and the evidence shows, is that app developers are like the rest of us. They have to prioritize, they have to decide which apps to build first.”
That seems straightforward enough — if jurors decide that Apple vs. Google is the relevant market. Google’s attorney suggests that because Apple has 64 percent of app store revenues, period, Google is too small to have monopoly power.
Now, he’s attempting to say that app stores are critical to phone buyers to the point that Apple competes with Google on that level:
“They take it home, they turn it on, it’s got a lousy app store on it... you don’t need a PhD in economics to know what’s going to happen next... they’re going to buy another phone.”
Kravis is going fast and fierce.
“Epic wants you to give them a deal they have not been able to get anywhere else... a deal that would effectively allow them to use the Play Store for free.”
Google’s attorney Jonathan Kravis is leading off its closing arguments, rather than Glenn Pomerantz — but he’s starting in the same place that Pomerantz’s opening arguments did.
The visual aid:
1) The Google Play Store competes with the Apple App Store
2) Consumers and app developers have choices
3) Epic has not shown that Google engaged in any anti-competitive conduct
4) Epic wants to use Google Play for free.
“What is this trial really about? Epic wants to use the Google Play Store for free,” says Kravis.
Epic’s lead attorney says if Epic wanted to make money, it would have taken Google’s old deal. Never mind that Tim Sweeney suggested Epic would make more this way...
We’re done with Epic and going straight into Google’s closing argument now.