(San Francisco) After Apple, it is Google’s turn to face Epic Games in court, the creator of the very popular video game Fortnite accusing the two technology groups of illegal monopoly on the mobile applications market.
More than three years after Epic Games’ complaint, the trial opened Monday in San Francisco, while Google has already been defending itself in Washington for a month and a half against the American Department of Justice, as part of a landmark antitrust trial.
Epic criticizes Apple and Google, which dominate the global mobile economy, for requiring application developers to use their download platforms (Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store) as well as their systems. payment, and making them pay commissions that are too high (30%).
“In 1998, when Google was founded, it was a fascinating young company with a single motto: ‘Don’t Be Evil,’” Epic’s lawyers pointed out in the introduction to the 2020 complaint. “Twenty-two Years later, Google has relegated its currency to the background and is using its size to harm competitors, innovators, customers and users in a multitude of markets that it has set out to monopolize, they say.
In Washington, prosecutors use similar arguments. They accuse the Californian group of having built its empire not thanks to its popularity, but through illegal exclusivity contracts with companies like Apple and Samsung, so that its search engine is installed by default on their devices and services.
The trial between Apple and Epic took place in 2021. Two years ago, a US federal judge ordered Apple to authorize an alternative payment system within the App Store, but also ruled that Epic would not failed to prove that Apple had violated competition law.
Apple and Google regularly argue that the commissions are of a standard level in the industry, and that they ensure the security of the payments system, in particular.
Unlike the iPhone maker, Google allows alternative stores. But the publisher of Fortnite has undertaken to demonstrate that this is an illusion, and that the Android mobile operating system is hardly more open than iOS.
Epic Games accuses its opponent of having entered into contracts with different companies to lock its hold on the application distribution market.
“Google has erected contractual barriers to competition […] by recognizing that the group risked losing billions of dollars if the distribution of Android apps was ever opened to competition and that competing stores, including an “Epic Store”, managed to “gain ground”, assures the studio in his revised August 2021 complaint.