Google paid manufacturers to maintain Play Store dominance

Epic Games’ lawsuit against Google and Apple has taken a new turn. While a ruling isn’t in the offing, new details from court documents reveal a lot about how Google plans to maintain its market dominance. For example, the search giant gave game developers “special benefits” in exchange for the Play Store rate of 30 percent.

Play Store market dominance

After the first draft of court documents were published in early August, the final details were released by US judge James Donato on Thursday. The raw document provides insight into the actions Google took to maintain the dominance of its app store; the actions followed, among other things, Epic Games’ strategic move to launch Fortnite Mobile outside the Play Store.

The actions included deals with smartphone manufacturers to shut out third-party app stores. This news came out earlier when OnePlus suddenly had to stop negotiations with Epic Games about installing the Fortnite Launcher. According to the court’s document, Motorola and LG, among others, recently struck a deal that would give them 12 percent of Google search revenue and 6 percent of Play Store revenue — specifically through their devices — if they didn’t use external sources. allow app stores on their phones. In addition to Motorola and LG, Google also made deals with BBK – the parent company of OnePlus, OPPO and Vivo – as well as Nokia (HMD Global), Sony, Sharp and Xiaomi.

For evading ‘loss of revenue’ – Google estimated that the rise of third-party app stores has affected the company could cost six billion dollars – the search giant also worked closely with game developers such as Activision Blizzard. In exchange for offering games on the Google Play Store, paying the Play Store fees (30%) and not spreading the word about it, Activision Blizzard got a package of extras offered through Project Hug. Epic Games was also approached by Google: through Project Hug, Epic received an offer of $208 million in “special benefits” if Fortnite was published in Google’s app store.

‘Google wanted to buy Epic’

Previous versions of court documents have already revealed that Google has considered buying Epic Games to “eliminate the danger.” More details about the strategy Google had intended to follow from the raw documents. For example, it thought of buying out the major shareholder of Epic Games, Tencent, which owns 40 percent of Epic Games’ shares. With those shares in the hands, Google could exert more influence on Epic’s business, was the thought.

For ‘plan b’, Google had in mind to partner with Tencent on a full acquisition of Epic Games, if possible to get its hands on the company. It is unknown how far those plans had progressed. Epic Games’ CEO, Tim Sweeney, previously said he “didn’t know” that the search giant was eyeing a takeover of Epic.

The documents make it clear that there was more to Google about its dominance than previously thought. What do you think of the deals Google made with various parties to maintain its market dominance? Do you like to see new (external) app stores appear, or do you prefer to stick to the Play Store? Be sure to let us know in the comments at the bottom of this article.