The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has filed an amicus brief in the Epic Games antitrust lawsuit against Google’s monopolistic behavior, suggesting that the court impose stringent actions against such practices.
“Google has thus installed itself as an unavoidable middleman for app developers who wish to reach Android users and vice versa,” Epic said.
“When a company engages in business practices that are found to violate the antitrust laws, courts are empowered to remedy those violations by ordering all relief necessary to restore competition in the affected markets,” it stated.
This includes “identifying and requiring actions that the defendant must affirmatively take toward that end.”
If companies violating antitrust laws reap the advantages secured through such actions, it will end up incentivizing other firms to engage in similar behavior, the agency warned.
Taking Action Against Google
The FTC pointed out that Epic’s request for injunctive relief already involved public interest.Epic does not seek monetary action but wants the court to ensure the creation of an “open, competitive Android ecosystem for all users and industry participants.” It seeks to end Google’s monopolistic actions that allegedly “harm device makers, app developers, app distributors, payment processors, and consumers.”
As such, the court can issue remedies to restore competition in the interest of the public and not just the plaintiff, the agency said.
For instance, the proposed measures would impose costs on developers and deprive them of the opportunity to seek competitive offers from Google, the tech giant stated. Developers could also be deprived of having control over the distribution of their apps.
Google argued that making the firm comply with Epic’s remedies would “impose significant burdens and costs on Google without creating a benefit to competition.”
The FTC dismissed these claims in its amicus brief. It pointed out that when an antitrust violator has the ability to comply with a remedy to restore competition, then “complaints about the burdens of compliance are no excuse.”
Antitrust Cases
The Epic lawsuit isn’t the only antitrust case Google faces. In December 2023, the tech firm announced it would pay $700 million to settle an antitrust lawsuit filed by several U.S. states.The lawsuit had accused the company of running a monopoly on its Play Store and having inflated the prices for paid apps. In the settlement, Google agreed to allow app and game developers to implement alternative billing options alongside Google Play’s billing system.
The lawsuit accused Google of illegally paying money to mobile manufacturers, wireless carriers, and browser developers to become the default search engine, thus preventing people from being exposed to alternate choices.
In 2021, Google paid such partners $26 billion to secure its dominant market position, Mehta stated. He pointed out that 80 percent of searches in the United States were on Google in 2009, which jumped to 90 percent by 2020.
Kent Walker, president of Google global affairs, said the decision “recognizes that Google offers the best search engine“ but concludes that Google ”shouldn’t be allowed to make it easily available,” according to a statement emailed to The Epoch Times.
“Given this, and that people are increasingly looking for information in more and more ways, we plan to appeal,” Walker stated. “As this process continues, we will remain focused on making products that people find helpful and easy to use.”
“To restore competition in existing digital markets and to foster emerging markets like AI, Amazon’s e-commerce platform should be separated from its product lines. Google should be broken into its search business and its browsing services,” she said.
“Each of the major cloud services—Google, Microsoft, and Amazon—should not be allowed to use their enormous size to dominate a whole new field, and that means blocking them from operating large language models. Each of these moves would create valuable competition.”
