On Tuesday, the creator of the Fortnite game won its San Francisco-based trial against Google.
The lawsuit, filed three years ago, claimed that Google sought to stifle competition by imposing up to 30% fees on app developers.
It also accused Google of engaging in an illegal practice by linking its Play Store and billing service. This meant that in order for a developer’s app to appear in the Play Store, they needed to use both.
The penalty will decided next year.
Alphabet, the owner of Google, saw its shares drop 1.20% in premarket trading on Tuesday. Epic Games is privately held, although Chinese tech giant Tencent has a 40% stake.
On their website, Epic Games commented on the legal victor, saying that it was proof that “Google’s app store practices are illegal, and they abuse their monopoly to extract exorbitant fees, stifle competition, and reduce innovation.”.
The rare loss for a major US tech company in a US court marks a setback, as recent rulings have generally favoured big tech, dismissing allegations of misusing market dominance or operating illegal monopolies.
Google is currently also facing legal challenges in a federal court in Washington, where officials from the Justice Department allege that the company engaged in illegal practices to maintain the dominance of its globally leading search engine.
The case is related to Google’s substantial revenue-sharing agreements, where Apple receives a significant portion of the ad revenue generated by Google as the default search engine on Apple devices.
