FTC urges judge to spank Google over Android App market monopoly

The US Federal Trade Commission has urged the California judge overseeing Epic Games' antitrust claim against Google to take strong action to correct the company's anticompetitive management of the Android app market. This follows a recent ruling by another federal judge that the tech giant violated US antitrust laws with its …

[Anonymous Coward]

Chicken feed

The numbers whined by Google seem rather small in relation to what their practices have brought in. Go for it, judge! And hold them to the timescales quoted.

[ecofeco]

Eat the rich

Google's profits have been ~$50 BILLION each year for years. ($84 BILLION net profit last year)

I HATE whiny rich people. And greedy, whiny rich people need to go straight to hell.

[Anna Nymous]

Re: Eat the rich

Don't eat the rich, they taste awful; plus there's probably a bunch of unsavory and harmful chemicals in them. Into the garbage disposal(*) with them instead... feet first.

(*) of the household variety, none of that 'industrial' or 'commercial' type.

[Snake]

Re: into the garbage disposal

In America, we prefer the wood chipper.

But don't be stupid, rent a power washer at the same time. Just make sure it's from a different rental company!

Even better, buy your own cash and then have it 'accidentally' self-immolate whilst in 'storage' after use.

[Jadith]

"...require Google to become a forced dealer for its competitors"

Wait, Google has competitors for its play store? I have heard of a few other stores, but nothing you could really see as a competitor. Like, maybe a few apps, but never anything I need to pay bills, bank, etc. Was google forced to disclose these competitors? or were they talking more in the theorectical sense, like "Let's say we had competitors, then this would be unfair"

[rgjnk]

Re: "...require Google to become a forced dealer for its competitors"

There's obviously other app stores, Amazon and Samsung are two that spring to mind & are widely used and have plenty of content overlap with Google's one (as the dueling updates often show).

[CA Dave]

Re: "...require Google to become a forced dealer for its competitors"

Which is how there's proof that there isn't antitrust monopoly going on, because if you want to go with arguably less secure stores you can. Epic has no standing from antitrust monopoly POV.

[CA Dave]

This entire case is a sham.

Profits aside, it's absolutely ridiculous to force Google to do anything such as open up Play Store to other markets or otherwise force them to open up the libraries and make MY access to the Store subject to being compromised more. NONE OF THIS WOULD HAVE HAPPENED had Epic not become a complete tool that shouldn't have won the court case to begin with! Apple is a complete ecosystem lockdown. It's absolutely impossible to have 3rd party app store. They lost that court case. The court case went to jury (stupid Google) so of course regular people who don't know squat are going to say "Yes it's anticompetitive!", when they don't even know of monopolies outside of the board game. They know zilch about laws and just let lawyers speak.

Epic is NOT an OEM of Android devices. Epic is NOT only relegated to limited markets because you can play Fortnite with cross-device players. Epic should have had ZERO STANDING to even bring about the lawsuit because Google's Play Store practices didn't irreparably damage the money Epic made (AND WERE SUED OVER AND LOST!) from people playing it on multiple other mediums. This was literally the "pot calling the kettle black".

The FTC needs to shove it and go after actual economic emergencies such as grocery stores conglomerates artificially raising prices all the way up to the CEOs and down to the supply chains. Those are the issues that are truly causing harm to the American public. Not people microtransacting on mobile phone games. Ridiculous. This entire court case should be thrown out by the Supreme Court and Epic should be told to piss off.

[The Logo]

The American court system's insanity on full display

If you think Google is anti-competitive in it's app store, even though it allows side loading, and other appstores to compete (looking at you Samsung), what would that make Apple's?? Which is on total lockdown in the US.

Apparently not anti-competitive at all.