Next week, Google CEO Sundar Pichai is set to defend his company’s app store practices in an ongoing legal battle with Epic Games, the maker of “Fortnite.” This will be the second time in the past three weeks that a high-ranking company official has testified in a major antitrust trial. The legal proceedings will take place in San Francisco federal court, with Epic’s lawyers expected to grill Pichai for up to an hour. They are aiming to challenge Google’s alleged monopoly on the Android app market through its Play Store and its payment practices with major developers. Google’s lawyers will also question Pichai for around 30 minutes, focusing on competition from other app stores.
This legal showdown is the latest in a series of regulatory challenges that Google has faced. The company has come under scrutiny for its handling of internal chat logs and its practices in the online search market.
The ongoing lawsuit, which is expected to last about four weeks, stems from actions taken in 2020 when Fortnite was removed from the Google Play Store after Epic introduced a feature allowing customers to pay directly. This move led to a legal battle, similar to one filed against Apple.
At the start of the trial, a jury found that Google had given a substantial sum of money to Activision-Blizzard as an incentive to release their video games on the Play Store. This is part of the larger debate surrounding Google’s app store practices and their revenue-sharing policy.
Source: nypost.com
