How Google Was Forced to Open Up

A federal judge is forcing Google to open up its Android operating system to rival app stores for three years.Credit…Andrew Kelly/Reuters

Google’s app ecosystem is broken open, for now

Four years ago, Epic Games began efforts to disrupt the two major smartphone operating systems, Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android. While one of those fights largely sputtered, the other has yielded major results.

A federal judge on Monday ruled that Google must allow developers to bring their own app stores to the Android operating system for three years, among other changes. It’s the latest in a series of legal blows against the tech giant.

“Big news!” Tim Sweeney, the C.E.O. of Epic, which makes the Fortnite game, wrote on social media after the ruling. He has made it a mission to reduce the fees that developers must pay to distribute their apps on iOS and Android. A reminder: App makers must fork over 15 percent to 30 percent of customer payments made via Apple’s or Google’s systems.

Epic largely lost its lawsuit against Apple. But in its case against Google, the video game company persuaded jurors and the presiding judge, James Donato of the Northern District of California, that Google had unlawfully thwarted competition against its app store to charge excessive fees. In his ruling, Donato noted that not even Amazon could make headway with its app store on Android.

Here’s some of what Donato ordered Google to do:

• Distribute third-party app stores on Android and give them full access to the same apps that the Google Play store has;

• Let developers charge users with their own billing systems, not just with Google Play Billing;

• Stop offering incentives to app makers to prioritize the Google Play store over other stores.

That mirrors to some degree what the European Union has ordered Apple and Google to do.

Google vowed to appeal. “These changes would put consumers’ privacy and security at risk, make it harder for developers to promote their apps and reduce competition on devices,” Lee-Anne Mulholland, the company’s vice president of regulatory affairs, wrote in a blog post.

Add that to the growing list of Google’s legal fights. The company is expected to appeal a loss to the Justice Department in a lawsuit over the dominance of its search engine. (The Justice Department is expected to lay out possible remedies on Tuesday.)