Epic accuses Google of "bribe or block" dominance on Android | Epic vs Google

gamesindustry.biz:

Sign up for the GI Daily here to get the biggest news straight to your inbox

Epic Games and Google both laid out their opening arguments in a San Francisco court on Monday, marking the beginning of the long-awaited antitrust trial that started with the removal of Fortnite from Google Play in 2020.

The Verge reported that Epic was the first to make its opening statement with lead attorney Gary Bornstein first directing the jury's attention to Google's dominance on Android, accounting for over 90% of app installs in 2020.

Bornstein claimed Google used a "bribe or block" strategy "[pay] actual and potential competitors not to compete."

This was a reference to the previously reported Project Hug, in which Google allegedly paid companies like Activision Blizzard and Riot Games to dissuade them from launching their own app stores on Android.

Bornstein also attempted to head off potential arguments from Google, such as that this antitrust lawsuit was all planned, admitting to Project Liberty: Epic's 'battle plan' against Apple and Google that led up to the Fornite hotfix and subsequent lawsuits. The Epic attorney argued: "You will not see any evidence that anyone was harmed by this or even could have been harmed by this."

He also noted that Google will argue it allows sideloading of apps, unlike Apple, so there are alternatives to Google Play and other Android app stores, but maintained that Google makes this process too difficult for end users.

Bornstein demonstrated this by showing the 16 steps it takes to sideload Fortnite onto an Android device, which prompts various warnings about unknown software.

"Fortnite was the biggest game in the world, Google knew it was not an unknown app," he said. "Google called it unknown