Google loses appeal in antitrust battle with Fortnite maker

San Francisco – A federal court of appeal confirmed a jury verdict sentenced Google’s Android App Store as an illegal monopoly, paving the way for a federal judge to apply a potentially disturbing reworking designed to give consumers more choice.

The unanimous decision published Thursday by the ninth Circuit Court of Appeals offers a double -barrel legal blow for Google, which was carried out in three distinct antitrust trials which led to various pillars of its Internet Empire declared as riding scofflaws since the end of 2023.

The unsuccessful attraction represents a major victory for Epic Games video games, which launched a legal crusade targeting Google’s reading store for Android applications and Apple iPhone App Store almost five years ago in order to bypass exclusive payment processing systems that billed 15% to 30% on integrated transactions.

The jury reprimand in December 2023 of the Google App Store for Android smartphones began a setback cascade which includes monopoly judgments against the omnipresent search engine of the year last year and the technology underlying its digital advertising network earlier this year.

Although it is not as lucrative as the search engine or the Google ad system, the play store for Android applications has long been a gold mine that has generated billions of dollars in annual income by taking a 15% to 30% drop in transactions integrated into the application channeled by the company’s payment processing system.

After a one -month trial, a jury of nine determined that Google had rigged its system to thwart alternative application stores to offer better offers to consumers and software developers. This verdict led to the American district judge James Donato ordering Google to demolish the digital walls protecting the Play Store from the competition, triggering the company’s appeal to cancel the conclusion of the jury and cancel the judge’s mandated reshuffle.

But a panel of three judges who heard Google’s call in February rejected the affirmation of his lawyers according to which Donato made an error by allowing the case to be determined by a jury which has deviated from the definition of the market described by another federal judge who mainly taken on the side of Apple in the Epic file against the manufacturer of the iPhone.

The Epic trial “was filled with evidence that Google’s anti -competitive driving has entrenched its domination, which allowed the Play Store to benefit from the effects of the network,” the judges in the decision wrote.

Unless Google can extend the delay in application imposed on the order of Donato issued last October, the company will have to start an overhaul which includes the provision of the entire Library of the Play Store of more than 2 million Android applications available to potential competitors and also help distribute alternative options. Google argued that the required revisions will increase the risks of confidentiality and security by exposing consumers to crooks and pirates posing as legitimate application stores.

But EPIC lawyers have ridiculed Google’s warnings to changes as frightening tactics in a desperate attempt to protect the fortune of his corporate parent Alphabet Inc.

Although Epic has failed to have the iPhone App Store declared, this case resulted in a judge issuing an order which obliged Apple to make an exclusive control over the treatment of transactions in the application and to allow links to alternative systems without collecting commission.

In addition to being struck by Donato’s command, Google still faces other problems that could leave an even greater breach in its finances.

In the context of the effort to approach Google’s illegal monopoly, a federal judge weighs a proposal from the United States Ministry of Justice which would require the sale of its Chrome web browser and prohibit the agreements of several dollars that the company concluded with Apple and others to lock its search engine as the main gateway to the Internet.

Google is also faced with a proposed rupture of its advertising technology as part of the countermeasures of its monopoly in this company. A trial on this proposal should start in September.