Google has formally filed a movement [PDF] asking the ninth Circuit Court docket of Appeals to put a pause on the order that forces the corporate to open the Play retailer to opponents. In the event you’ll recall, Google misplaced an antitrust lawsuit filed by Epic Video games after a federal jury discovered that the corporate held an unlawful monopoly on app distribution and in-app billing companies for Android units. Earlier this month, US District Choose James Donato ordered Google to permit third-party app shops entry to the Google Play app catalog and to make these shops downloadable from its storefront. Now, Google is asking the court docket for a keep on that order whereas it is interesting the Epic antitrust lawsuit choice, saying that it’s going to expose 100 million Android customers within the US to “substantial new safety dangers.”
The corporate known as the order “dangerous and unwarranted” and mentioned that if it is allowed to face, it should threaten Google’s potential to “present a secure and trusted used expertise.” It argued that if it makes third-party app shops out there for obtain from Google Play, folks may assume that the corporate is vouching for them, which might increase “actual dangers for [its] customers.” These app shops might have “much less rigorous protections,” Google defined, that might expose customers to dangerous and malicious apps.
It additionally mentioned that giving third-party shops entry to the Play catalog might hurt companies that do not need their merchandise out there alongside inappropriate or malicious content material. Giving third-party shops entry to its complete library might give “bad-intentioned” shops a “veneer of legitimacy.” Furthermore, it argued that permitting builders to hyperlink out from their apps “creates important threat of misleading hyperlinks,” since unhealthy actors might use the function for phishing assaults to compromise customers’ units and steal their information.
Certainly one of court docket’s principal proposed modifications is to permit builders to take away Google Play billing as an choice, permitting them to supply their apps to Android customers with out having to pay the corporate a fee. Nevertheless, Google mentioned that by permitting builders to take away its billing system, it might “pressure an choice that will not have the safeguards and options that customers count on.”
In its submitting, Google emphasised that the three weeks the court docket gave it to make these sweeping modifications is simply too brief for a “Herculean process.” It creates an “unacceptable threat of security” that might result in main points affecting the performance of customers’ Android units, it mentioned. The corporate additionally questioned why the court docket sided with Epic in its antitrust lawsuit, whereas it sided with Apple in the same case additionally filed by the online game firm. “It’s pause-inducing that Apple, which requires all apps undergo its proprietary App Retailer, isn’t a monopolist, however Google — which constructed selection into the Android working system so gadget makers can preinstall and customers can obtain competing app shops — was condemned for monopolization.”
