Yesterday, when Epic won its Google antitrust lawsuit for a second time, it wasn’t quite clear how soon Google would need to start dismantling its affirmed illegal monopoly.
Today, Google admitted the answer was: 14 days. Google had just 14 days to enact major changes to its Google Play app store, and the way it does business with phonemakers, cellular carriers, and app developers, unless it won an emergency stay (pause) from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals as it continues to appeal. It must stop forcing apps to use Google Play Billing, allow app developers to freely steer their users to other platforms, and limit the perks it can offer in exchange for preinstalled apps, among other changes.
Those changes would not yet include Epic’s biggest wins. They don’t yet force Google to carry rival app stores within the Google Play Store, or to share its full app catalog with those rival stores, so don’t expect the Epic Games Store or the Microsoft Xbox Store to appear inside Google Play quite yet.
And as of Friday afternoon, all of this may take even longer. Hours after we published our story, Google won its emergency stay, and now has at least three weeks before it has to change Android app store policy.
When he issued the permanent injunction to begin cracking open Android, Judge James Donato gave Google eight months to come up with a “narrowly tailored” system of safety and security procedures before it would be forced to carry rival app stores, so Google has seven and a half months left once the stays have been lifted. Rival app stores won’t appear inside Google Play until 2026 at the earliest.
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Source: Google has just two weeks to begin cracking open Android, it admits in emergency filing | The Verge
Robin Edgar
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