Sean Hollister

Mickens came in with an agenda — he decided to “Examine whether the friction that Android imposes on non-Google Play Store app installation is justified by security concerns.”

He teaches a class on operating systems, another on computer security, and is co-director of the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet and Society and the Institute for Rebooting Social Media. He says he used to work for Microsoft Research, and has published papers on mobile device security including “the propagation of malware on mobile devices.”

Epic lead attorney Gary Bornstein to Google lead attorney Glenn Pomerantz, as they walked back into the courtroom together.

One would think so: we know Xbox handed out many policy exceptions for streaming apps, and I bet some astute reader can figure out which of the ones at my link is Spotify.

Alzetta says that unlike with many other companies, Google didn’t make its own payment system mandatory for Spotify to adopt — the very first time Google approached Spotify about adding Google Play Billing, it was with a proposal in hand.

Spotify’s Sandra Alzetta says it’s against the company’s “principles,” too, and that “strategically,” Spotify simply won’t do it, full stop.

We’re hearing a lot of assertions how hard Spotify has worked to build its own payment system and how important choice is to users (Alzetta says “we know that” choice results in increased conversion rates), but there was only a passing mention of the Coalition for App Fairness, a controversial lobbying group which, I revealed in 2021, was set up explicitly by Epic Games to help win its case.

We are looking at a line in the actual agreement between Google and Spotify where Spotify made out like a bandit compared to other Android developers. It reads:

Spotify’s Sandra Alzetta is the one who brokered the secret deal, we’re learning — and she just confirmed in no uncertain terms what we learned yesterday about Google’s zero percent sweetheart deal for Spotify.

Judge James Donato is telling the jury that they will see more details about Spotify that won’t be revealed in public court. It’s the second time we’ve done that in this case — but the previous secret numbers eventually did get unsealed, revealing that Spotify had a secret deal to pay effectively nothing to Google for the Play Store.