Google’s position is that it was concerned about losing games on Play, but that there’s nothing nefarious about that. “We just wanted developers to choose Play,” Kochikar said in testimony — particularly when Apple’s iOS was an alternative. And getting games on the service, Koh testified, “was the investment we thought was worth all the dollars.”
Conversely, Epic is using these documents to argue that Google feared competition for Android app distribution and has maintained its Play store as an unlawful monopoly. This deal’s existence doesn’t prove that — but at the very least, it’s an interesting look at how Google sees its games business.
Kind of sounds like they’re arguing the same point?
The framing is different.
Google: we want to encourage developers to use our solution instead of competitors, that totally exist and developers are free to use whatever they want
Epic: Google has a monopoly and they are trying to keep it that way and prevent competitors to come
Except Google is framing the Apple App store as an alternative to the Google Play store, which… doesn’t really make sense… Especially in this context, they weren’t offering money to release fortnite on the Play store over the App store, they were offering money to release on the play store instead of as a standalone or in a competing store.
It absolutely makes sense. There are people that will make their Android vs iPhone purchasing decision based on which platform “has Fortnite” (in it’s in the default app store that people actually use).
but they weren’t offering money for platform exclusivity, they were offering money for store exclusivity on the platform
Where are you getting exclusively from? It’s not in the article.
I can actually see both sides on this one. Google views it as simply having it available on their store and nothing else, where epic views it as Google wanting a piece of every pie there is. Can’t really say who I side with here.
