Sean Hollister

“During that time the App Store was charging this lower fee and Google wasn’t, you’re not aware of a single developer that pulled out of the Play Store because of this differential pricing?”

And, about the “loophole” where some developers were able to pay 0 percent because they hadn’t adopted Google Play Billing: “Are you aware of any developer that abandoned iOS and came over to Android exclusively?”

He wasn’t aware of either. Epic’s implication is that Google didn’t truly compete with Apple on app store pricing. (Google, mind you, often argues it competes for consumer purchases of phones instead.)

Google’s primary answer so far is that these things take time, but we’re seeing internal Google executive summaries that at least suggest Google was taking that time intentionally.

I haven’t seen any proof Google was being greedy, but it did seem worried about how developers would react: one executive summary of a meeting between top Play Store execs shows they were so concerned with the “Spotify plan” that changing the Play Store policy seemingly hinged on Spotify.

“Make go-no go pending Spotify status” was listed as a recommendation right under “Change rev share to 30(3mo/15)” and “Change policy for all (with risk mitigation measures and exceptions).” I wonder what those exceptions were.

“In the order of magnitude, it’s reliable, but I can’t attest to it being correct.”

Even so, at least one Google internal document suggested that switching wasn’t common. “While the number of OS switchers is small, those that switched to iOS tend to be younger and live in urban areas,” reads one line that Epic highlighted for the jury.

“There is more switching behavior between Android OEMs than churn to iOS,” reads another.

In March 2021, a Google document shows 22 percent of Apple iOS users were listed as considering another OS, but only 9 percent were listed as intending to switch, with actual switchers labeled TBD.

For Android, it was 17 percent considering another OS, just 7 percent intending to switch, and again, TBD on actual switching. Google has already argued that small percents of billions add up to big numbers.

Gennai says that’s correct.

“You understand that Google makes money off those apps on iPhone?”

“In some instances,” he says.

(I missed what she was driving at this time, I’m afraid, just thought I’d share an interesting moment in the room.)

So he’s seemingly being forced to admit he doesn’t know various facts and figures and processes now — like how often Google Play is preinstalled on phones or the quantity of apps on Play versus the Amazon Appstore.

She also tried to suggest he ignored the 3.4-star rating for the Move to iOS app he demoed, choosing to focus on its 100 million downloads instead of its 180,000 reviews, and points out he skipped steps in his demo.

“You skipped messages for example?”

“I did, yes,” he admits.

Here’s what’s at the top of that document, written by Gennai:

Why did he write the “competing on price (rev-share) is prone to be a race to the bottom” bit, asks Google’s lawyer.

“If that that were to become known, other developers would come to us to do the same, and... negotiate it down, and that would play out badly for us,” said Gennai.

Correction: I originally missed a bunch of text in the middle of the document; it has now been added.

Google’s point seems to be that switching between Android and iOS is not that difficult, and I largely agree, but not because of what was just shown. This demo doesn’t show lots of other switching costs beyond initial setup (including carrier-gated things like making visual voicemail work properly), and I would argue it’s harder to go from iPhone to Android than the other way around.

What about subscription devs who were paying 0 percent back in the day?

“We knew we were going to have to come around and correct that problem,” he adds.

This does not explain Spotify’s current 0 percent rate, or its special offer to Netflix, or other deals we’ve seen in court, though.

But it is a defense for another point Epic has made about how Google was not enforcing Play Store Billing evenly.

“Why did Google choose to invest in the Play Developer Console the way you described?” asks Google’s attorney Jonathan Kravis.

“Our business model was aligned with the business model of developers, when they succeed, we succeed,” was the core of his answer.

Now, Google’s showing that Google didn’t just copy Apple App Store features — Google introduced promo codes and pre-registration for apps first, he claims, and quickly followed Apple with apps for kids and a subscription game library. The reason: “We wanted to stay competitive to Apple’s App Store.”

In 2010, he joined the Android team as a product manager reporting to Jamie Rosenberg, whom we’ve already heard from in court. He worked on Android strategy — and was intimately involved in Play Store decisions, it seems.

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