Google requests the appellate court to overturn Epic Games' victory in the antitrust case

Google has asked the U.S. Court of Appeals to overturn a lower court’s ruling on Epic Games’ antitrust lawsuit, which would force Google to allow third-party app stores and payment solutions to run through its app marketplace, Play Store. Epic sued Apple and Google separately in August 2020, accusing them of unfairly restricting apps in their app stores to only using their payment systems (taking a 30% commission on all purchases) and preventing apps from using external systems. The lower court’s decision will open Google’s app store and apps to other payment systems, including those that support encryption. However, in a Nov. 27 filing with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Google argued that the California federal court judge’s ruling “will directly undermine Google’s efforts to compete with Apple and the iPhone.”