The eventual result of the Epic Games vs. Apple lawsuit could fundamentally change the way the app stores work. Epic’s claim is that Apple and Google use their massive reach and resources to maintain a monopoly over and crush competition. They allegedly do this by forcing developers to use their mandated payment gateways and taking a 30 percent cut of all in-app purchases.
The lawsuit has also given us insight into the inner workings and decisions of these companies. An updated filing of court documents has now revealed that Google actually considered buying out Epic Games in order to eliminate the competition.
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"Not content with the contractual and technical barriers it has carefully constructed to eliminate competition, Google uses its size, influence, power, and money to induce third parties into anticompetitive agreements that further entrench its monopolies," states the updated complaint (thanks to The Verge).
"For example, Google has gone so far as to share its monopoly profits with business partners to secure their agreement to fence out competition, has developed a series of internal projects to address the 'contagion' it perceived from efforts by Epic and others to offer consumers and developers competitive alternatives, and has even contemplated buying some or all of Epic to squelch this threat." You can read the whole thing here.
If this comes as a surprise to you, you’re not the only one. Even Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeny was surprised to learn of this. “This was unbeknownst to us at the time, and because of the court’s protective order we’re just finding out now about Google’s consideration of buying Epic to shut down our efforts to compete with Google Play,” he tweeted. “Whether this would have been a negotiation to buy Epic or some sort of hostile takeover attempt is unclear. Here Google also talks about the “frankly abysmal” sideloading experience they created, all while touting Android publicly as an “open platform”.”
According to other documents released during the proceeding, we learnt that Epic Games lost $130 Million during the first wave of its exclusives. The company spent $217 million in minimum guarantees and made back only $86 million. That’s only 40 percent of the initial investment.
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