How a lot wouldn’t it price Google to let third-party app shops just like the Epic Video games Retailer reside inside its personal Google Play Retailer, with entry to each Android app? Google says the reputational harm can’t be calculated — however that it’d take 12 to 18 months and upwards of $60 million to construct and keep the technical underpinnings.
We’re nonetheless ready to search out out what Epic truly gained in its shock victory in opposition to Google final December, after a jury determined the Google Play app retailer and Google Play Billing are unlawful monopolies — however we all know what Epic needs. The Fortnite developer’s greatest ask was arguably for Google to open up its personal Android app retailer, forcing Google to hold different competing app shops inside its partitions.
Whereas $61.3 million might sound like some huge cash on the low finish (or upwards of $137 million on the excessive finish), we noticed in court docket paperwork that Google makes billions of {dollars} in revenue from the Google Play retailer each quarter — for 2021, the corporate’s personal forecast steered the shop would produce almost $12 billion of revenue in a single 12 months. That’s over $31 million in revenue every day.
Google additionally argues it needs to be entitled to gather a payment from third-party app shops if it have been pressured to undergo with these adjustments.
Once more, it’s not all in regards to the cash. As you possibly can learn within the full doc, Google claims that Android app builders “would out of the blue face a number of regulatory and compliance dangers related to commercial and distribution of their apps around the globe” if Google have been to let any app retailer take its catalog of apps.
It additionally argues that consumer security and its popularity are at stake as a result of “ill-intentioned app shops might then intermingle the apps from Google’s catalog with malware or pirated apps from their very own catalog,” amongst different examples.
“These proposed cures would require a dramatic redesign of the Play Retailer and Android that may hurt Android customers and builders, the belief and security of the Play retailer, and the Android ecosystem and require Google to turn into a pressured seller for its opponents,” Google writes.
Epic will now get an opportunity to query Google’s estimates, and file a rebuttal. The court docket is scheduled to have a last listening to on August 14th.
