( AFP / JOSH EDELSON )
A federal judge in California on Monday ordered Google to allow competing platforms to install its Google Play Store apps, but the group has already indicated it intends to appeal.
This sentence was handed down almost ten months after a jury found Google guilty of monopolizing the market for the distribution of applications on Android, its mobile operating system, ruling in favor of video game publisher Epic Games. , at the origin of the procedure.
San Francisco magistrate James Donato gave the technology giant eight months to comply with his decision, i.e. by early July 2025, because the judgment will become effective on November 1.
Once the Alphabet subsidiary has modified Android and Google Play Store to allow downloads from other application stores, it will have to leave the door open for three years.
As soon as the judgment was announced, the general manager of Epic Games, Tim Sweeney, indicated that the publisher would launch its own application store in 2025, “without the messages from Google to scare and the 30% levies” that the technology giant takes from the income of application creators.
This launch will only take place in the United States, because the decision published Monday only concerns the American territory.
“The legal and regulatory battle will continue around the world,” explained Tim Sweeney.
The period set by the federal judge gives three years to developers, operators and manufacturers of smartphones to “build an ecosystem of sufficient size so that Google can no longer stop it”, at the end of this first phase, urged the boss of ‘Epic Games.
“These changes would present risks to data protection and user security,” Google responded in a press release, announcing that it would appeal.
“If they satisfy Epic, they will cause a series of unintended consequences which will be unfavorable to American consumers, developers and equipment manufacturers,” insisted the company based in Mountain View (California).
Google specified that it would ask the courts to suspend the execution of the judgment pending the examination of the appeal.
