Google is in a pickle again, and this time it’s not the EU that’s after the company — it’s the United States, or at least a big chunk of it.
According to Bloomberg, 36 U.S. states, including New York, Utah, North Carolina, and Tennessee, are suing Google over anticompetitive tactics in the company’s Google Play Store.
The complaint, filed in the federal court in San Francisco Wednesday, takes aim at Google’s 30 percent commission fee on app purchases, which it claims is too big.
“Unbeknownst to most consumers who own a mobile device running Android, every time they purchase an app from the Google Play Store, or purchase digital content or subscriptions within an app, up to 30 percent of the money they pay goes to Google,” the complaint reads. “To collect and maintain this extravagant commission, Google has employed anticompetitive tactics to diminish and disincentivize competition in Android app distribution.”
Google responded in a blog post Wednesday, claiming that its system provides “more openness and choice than others” — by which it means Apple, whose iOS is essentially the only competition Google’s Android has.
“This complaint mimics a similarly meritless lawsuit filed by the large app developer Epic Games, which has benefitted from Android’s openness by distributing its Fortnite app outside of Google Play,” the post says.
Epic sued Google last year over anticompetitive conduct, but the company also sued Apple over the same thing. Now, in its defense, Google is pointing at Apple, which charges a similar fee on iOS purchases, as well as the fact that most developers who have content on Google Play don’t pay a fee at all.
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The lawsuit comes just days after a federal court threw out an antitrust lawsuit against Facebook. It’s not the only antitrust lawsuit against Google, though — the Department of Justice and 12 states have filed a complaint last year, charging Google for having a monopoly over search. The company was also fined $1.7 billion in 2019 by the European Union, over “abusive practices in online advertising.”
