Sean Hollister

The email goes on, but I didn’t have time to copy down the rest.

If you’re still playing our bingo, mark “Google Play Billing” and “IAP” on your card.

“The CEO, appropriately in my view, said ask Mr. Walker,” says the judge. But the buck stops with Walker, he suggested.

Yesterday, Judge Donato officially ordered Google to do this: “Google is directed to provide the Court with all copies of the litigation holds issued in this case by November 15, 2023.”

There may also be video deposition from Amazon midday, Epic says. No mention of original Android boss Andy Rubin.

Judge James Donato is going over logistics now, trying to make sure the trial will run on time. Epic and Google have a disagreement over Google Play’s net profit margin. “Doing it 100 percent your way, what is the net profit margin?” the judge asked Google.

A man from Google’s team immediately pulled Google lead attorney Glenn Pomerantz aside, whispered in his ear, and then Google deflected the question. “They’re relying on numbers and margins that clearly don’t count any Android costs,” said Pomerantz.

We’ll hear from expert witnesses on Monday and Tuesday.

💰 Google $147M offer to Epic might not have needed CEO approval; “Google CEO approval is required if total commercial commitment value exceeds $150M, and audit committee required,” I spotted on a slide in the Business Council presentation.

🖋️ It also read “Approval by Sridhar Ramaswamy and Philipp Schindler required.” Those would have been Google’s heads of advertising, commerce, and business.

💪 An imposing man (bodyguard?) walked Sundar Pichai to the bathroom.

Lockheimer basically shrugged.

Epic tried to suggest the folding phones Lockheimer toyed with on the stand were just hardware innovation, not software. Lockheimer (rightly, based on what I know of Android’s many changes to support foldables) said no.

Epic asked Lockheimer which came first: tipping off reporters, or the bug report going live? It seems pretty clear from evidence we’ve seen that the bug report went live first, even if Google planned it that way.

Google originally wanted to lick the cookie but didn’t manage it. (One last bingo stamp for you!)

Epic’s attorney is now combating the assertion that the change was designed to compete with Apple, pointing out how long it took Google to follow Apple here and that Samat also pointed out, “We will not make this happen in a very vocal way.”

“It’s an ad from Apple showing, basically saying that when you grab an app from the shelf, you never know what you’re going to get from the Android side,” says Lockheimer.

“We want users to understand that the apps they’re about to sideload haven’t gone through the same level of security checks as the apps we run through the Play Store,” he says.

And we’re seeing that the head of Samsung’s mobile business, DJ Koh, expressed concern in September 2015 that Android wasn’t secured well enough against sideloaded apps (I added the link you see):

Koh added later: “I think it is time to serious think [sic] about the security baseline of Android and how to improve it.”