Google officially filed a motion [PDF] Urges the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to: put a pause Order forcing the company to open the Play Store to competitors. As you may recall, Google lost an antitrust lawsuit brought by Epic Games after a federal jury found that the company had an illegal monopoly over app distribution and in-app purchasing services for Android devices. did. Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge James Donato ordered Google to allow third-party app stores to access the Google Play app catalog and make them available for download from its storefront. Google is currently appealing Epic’s antitrust lawsuit and asking the court to put the order on hold, saying it would expose 100 million U.S. Android users to “significant new security risks.” are.
The company called the order “harmful and unjust” and said if left in place it would threaten Google’s ability to “deliver a safe and trusted used experience.” It argued that allowing third-party app stores to be downloaded from Google Play could lead people to believe the company was guaranteeing them, which “could increase actual risks.” [its] Google explained that these app stores may have “less protection” and could expose users to harmful and malicious apps.
It also said that giving third-party stores access to the Play catalog could harm companies that don’t want their products available with inappropriate or malicious content. Giving third-party stores access to your entire library can give a “malicious” store a “pretense of legitimacy.” In addition, allowing developers to link out of their apps is a critical issue for malicious links, as malicious actors could use this feature in phishing attacks to compromise users’ devices and steal data. “This poses a significant risk.”
One of the main changes the court is proposing is to allow developers to remove Google Play charges as an option, allowing developers to offer apps to Android users without paying fees to the company. You will be able to do it. But Google said allowing developers to remove billing systems “could force users into options that may not have the safeguards and features they expect.”
Google emphasized in its filing that the three weeks the court gave it to make these sweeping changes was too short for a “herculean task.” This creates an “unacceptable safety risk” and can lead to serious issues that affect the functionality of users’ Android devices, the company said. The company also questioned why the court sided with Epic in the antitrust case but sided with Apple in a similar case brought by a video game company. “It’s a sigh of relief that Apple isn’t a monopoly, requiring all apps to go through its own App Store, but Google, which built the option into the Android operating system, has built a choice into the Android operating system that device manufacturers can pre-install and users can use. “It was a monopoly company that allowed people to download competing app stores.” ”
