Jury hands Epic win in antitrust case against Google

venturebeat.com:

Do you want to get the latest gaming industry news straight to your inbox? Sign up for our daily and weekly newsletters here .

Epic Games won big in court today as the jury in its antitrust case ruled that Google has been operating an illegal monopoly with its Google Play app store and billing service.

The case comes three years after Epic Games sued both Google and Apple for the alleged anticompetitive practices in the restrictions it imposes on developers when it comes to its platform for distributing and making payments in its mobile app store.

The case was very different in terms of outcome from the antitrust case against Apple, which Epic Games largely lost. It still has a last-ditch appeal at the U.S. Supreme Court, but a lower court judge and an appeals court affirmed that Epic failed to prove its case that Apple was a monopolist. Epic won on just one point — that app and game devs should be allowed to advertise their alternative stores with lower prices inside their apps that are available on the Apple app store.

But in this case, the jury decided Google had illegally tied its app store and its billing payment service together. And it also ruled that “Project Hug” deals, where Google paid game developers not to compete with its app store, were anticompetitive too.

To me, Project Hug was the biggest difference between the Apple and Google cases. Since Apple makes its own smartphones, it didn’t have to cut deals with other companies to secure its business advantages. But while Google created the Android standard, it has invited many smartphone manufacturers to make phones based on the standard. To secure universal cooperation and to keep its Google Play store strong, Google initiated Project Hug, where it paid