This Verdict 'Fundamentally Reshapes Google's Monopoly'

A federal jury ruled Monday that Google's highly profitable Android app store is an unlawful monopoly, a landmark antitrust decision that one observer hailed as "a message that justice can prevail in the fight against Big Tech's outsized power over our lives."

The ruling stemmed from an antitrust lawsuit brought by Epic Games, a video game maker that accused Google of using its dominant market position to crush competition and drive up fees for app developers.

The Google Play Store has become one of the tech giant's most profitable businesses, despite company executives' previous claims that the platform "would not be a profit center."

In a statement following Monday's decision, Epic Games said that "over the course of the trial we saw evidence that Google was willing to pay billions of dollars to stifle alternative app stores by paying developers to abandon their own store efforts and direct distribution plans, and offering highly lucrative agreements with device manufacturers in exchange for excluding competing app stores."

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