Google must open Android to other app stores and billing options, judge rules

SAN FRANCISCO — In December, a federal jury in San Francisco found that Google had violated antitrust law by imposing high fees and stringent rules on Epic Games and other app developers in Google’s app store.

On Monday, Judge James Donato of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ordered Google to make a series of changes to address its anticompetitive conduct. For three years starting Nov. 1, the company must allow developers to bring their own app stores to the Android mobile operating system. It must also allow app makers to charge users with their own billing systems, outside the Android ecosystem.

Google will be entitled to charge developers “a reasonable fee for these services,” which must be based on Google’s actual costs.

Donato acknowledged that Google would be unhappy with his decision.

“Google’s modus operandi in this case has been to deluge the court in an ocean of comments, many of which were cursory and undeveloped,” he wrote in his ruling. He compared the volume of Google’s arguments to a “blunderbuss.”

The order was a victory for Epic, which makes the popular video game Fortnite and has waged legal battles against Google and Apple since 2020 in an effort to weaken their power over the app economy.

Epic had petitioned the court to crack open Google’s Android system so it could offer its own app store while sidestepping the company’s rules and fees. Donato’s ruling fulfilled most of those requests but will still force Epic and other developers to pay Google for Android’s security and content moderation services.

Google on Monday reiterated its vow to appeal the jury’s verdict.

“The Epic verdict missed the obvious: Apple and Android clearly compete,” Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs, wrote in a blog post. “We will appeal and ask the courts to pause implementing the remedies to maintain a consistent and safe experience for users and developers as the legal process moves forward.”

Epic CEO Tim Sweeney celebrated the ruling in a thread on social network X.

“Big news!” he wrote. “The Epic Games Store and other app stores are coming to the Google Play Store in 2025 in the USA — without Google’s scare screens and Google’s 30% app tax — thanks to victory in Epic v Google.”

He vowed to continue his company’s legal battle against Google in other countries.

Epic instigated the fight with Google in 2020 by allowing customers to make in-app purchases directly with Epic, bypassing Google and violating its rules. Google quickly banned Fortnite, and Epic responded by suing.

The game developer was the last plaintiff standing in a legal fight that once included dating app company Match Group and attorneys general from all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. Before the trial began, Google settled with Match by agreeing to return $40 million to the company. It also agreed to pay $700 million to settle the states’ claims.

Epic mostly lost its case against Apple, but a federal judge allowed the developer to give users the option of paying for its games outside Apple’s App Store.

One of Epic’s main goals with the litigation was to reduce the fees it paid Google. On the Play Store, Google charges app makers a 15% fee for customer payments for app subscriptions and up to 30% for purchases made within popular apps that are downloaded from its store. Google says 99% of developers qualify for a fee of 15% or lower on in-app purchases.

With Donato’s order, Google will not be able to impose restrictions on how developers can compete on the Android platform in exchange for “a payment, revenue share, or access to any Google product or service.”

Google can no longer use those incentives to stop app makers from telling users they can buy subscriptions outside Google’s billing system, for example. It can also no longer force phone makers to preinstall the Google Play Store in any specific location on a device’s screen or prevent them from loading other app stores with those conditions.

App makers will also be able to share links with users offering ways to download apps outside a Google app store. Epic had asked the judge to make it easier for Android device users to download apps from the open internet.

Google faces two other major antitrust lawsuits in the United States that challenge various parts of its business, including a landmark case with the Justice Department that questioned the dominance of its search engine, which the company lost in August. The government is scheduled to lay out a list of possible remedies Tuesday.

A second trial with the Justice Department, about Google’s market power in advertising technology, will be decided in the coming months. Just last week, Epic lobbed another lawsuit at Google, and its Android partner Samsung, claiming the two companies worked together to make it harder for Epic to compete on the platform.

Donato weighed in on whether U.S. antitrust law could keep up with the fast-moving tech sector.

“The question has been asked whether our tech-based economy has outgrown the federal antitrust laws, which date back to 1890 when the Sherman Act was signed into law,” he wrote. “In the court’s view, it has not.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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