The biggest change: Google will have to let developers keep consumers away from the Google Play Store for several years, if this settlement is approved.
You can read the full 68-page rulebook for yourself at the bottom of this story, but here’s the TL;DR on what it includes:
Does that seem like a lot to you? If you add it all up, it makes for a slightly different Google app store landscape than we’ve seen over the last decade and a half. But not only does each of these concessions have an expiration date, many of them are arguably not real concessions.
Google argued during the Epic vs Google essay that users were already perfectly capable of installing third-party apps on their devices through many means, and it claimed that many of its agreements with developers, OEMs, and carriers did not require them, for example, to put Google Play exclusively on Google Play. a phone or its home screen.
We confirmed this evening with Google spokesperson Dan Jackson that User Choice Billing participants receive a discounted rate of just 4% off Google fees when users choose their own payment system, and that this will not change following the settlement. Not only did Google find internally that developers would lose money when users chose the 4% rate, but Google also gives companies like Spotify a free ride while seemingly charging everyone.
Perhaps most importantly, Google reserves the right not to allow developers like Netflix to link to their own websites in order to offer their users a discounted rate. “Google is not required to allow developers to include links that take a user outside of an app distributed through Google Play to make a purchase,” the settlement agreement states. We’re still waiting to find out whether Apple will allow links and/or buttons to alternative payment systemson the basis of the judgment rendered in Epic vs. Apple. But the Google/State AG settlement suggests that, regardless, Google will not be required to allow the links.
In a tweet, Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, calls the settlement “an injustice to all Android users and developers”, adding that he “approves the imposition of a 30% monopoly rent by Google, replacing the anti-competitive Google Play billing link by a new anti-competitive “user choice” imposed by Google. “billing” which adds an unnecessary 26% Google tax for payments they don’t process. Epic has an official blog post it basically says the same thing.
According to court filings, the states will ask Judge James Donato to approve the settlement on February 8. It is the same judge who supervises Epic vs Googleand these two parties will discuss what Epic could have actually gained in this case during the second week of January.
In 2022, Google settled a small lawsuit with app developers for 90 million dollars.
