Epic Games has got a big win against Google in the new lawsuit which was filed last week in the Northern District of California by Epic against Google and Samsung for preventing access to third-party app stores on Android devices.
In the court, the decision was taken in the favour of Epic and it get mandated for Google to restructure its Play Store to allow access to third-party app stores in the entire App catalog.
It took ten months for this development to come after the same court ruled that Google holds a monopoly in the Android app distribution market and in-app billing services.
Also read: Epic free games program on Android phone to be launched this year
Now, after the judgement, it has been forced to Google to allow public visibility to third-party app stores within the Google Play Store, which was removed earlier over the conflict of 30% app tax. This means that users will now be able to find Epic Games store and other third-party store option in the Play store and can easily download it from there, and now they don’t need to do this from infamous “unknown app” scare screens that appeared previously.
But it will only be available for the users in US from November 1 till a specified duration of three years with some additional changes to the app store.
What are the benefits of Epic’s win?
- As Epic has won over Google, now developers can bypass Google Play’s billing system (and the 30% app tax) and inform users of alternative payment solutions.
- In addition to this, developers can now easily and freely link users to provide an options to download outside of the Play Store. Also, developers can opt out of these changes.
Court judgement for Google:
- Google has been explicitly prevented by court to offer any form of money or perks to device makers to stop them from pre-installing third-party app stores on devices.
- Also, it is not allowed to Google to contact any developers to prevent them from launching apps on rival app stores.
As Epic Games win against Google, Google can only implement “reasonable security measures” for its Play Store and charge a fee for those services. Specialized technical committee appointed by Google and Epic will look into the dispute for these cases.
Google’s Vice President of Regulatory Affairs “Lee-Anne Mulholland” confirmed that Google has planned to appeal the decision of the court, so users can expect more developments in this saga.
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