GoKawiilis a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.
Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
One month after Epic Games and Google seemingly stopped fighting over the future of Android app distribution, they were back in a San Francisco courtroom today — where Judge James Donato just ordered Google to make it easier to install rival app stores on Android.
It’s been nearly three years since a jury unanimously decided that Google had an illegal monopoly over Android apps, and almost two years since Judge Donato decided the best way of undoing that monopoly would be to crack open Android app distribution. Donato ordered Google to carry rival Android app stores inside its own Google Play Store, and to provide rivals with complecte access to Google’s full catalog of apps, for several years.
But Epic argued that Google is still making it too difficult to install rival app stores, showing the entire courtroom a live demo of how many steps it currently takes — and Judge Donato agreed that some of those steps were unnecessary “anticompetitive friction” and ordered Google to remove them.
First, Epic’s lawyer Yonatan Even showed that if you search Google’s Play Store for the term “store for apps,” no third-party app stores appear, only physical stores. “Wait, why did Walmart come up?” Judge Donato asked. “That’s not good,” he exclaimed.
These are my own screenshots, not the live demo shown in court, as no photography is allowed there. Images: Google
“That is not acceptable, that has to be fixed. I want every possible variation that’s even only 70 percent properly phrased,” Donato ordered. Google’s counsel agreed to make it happen.
Similarly, Judge Donato bristled when he saw that users have to press a “view” button before they can press an “install” button when choosing to install a third-party app store, and so that will change too. “You don’t get that when you’re looking at Apple Music,” he noted.
“Make that install, not view,” Donato ordered, and Google agreed to do so.
... continue reading