Google has accepted a settlement in an antitrust lawsuit. In it, the company agreed to pay $700 million and make changes to its app store, the Play Store. Of this amount, $630 million will be distributed to the company’s clients.
The lawsuit was filed by 36 U.S. states and Washington (District of Columbia) in 2021. The lawsuit questioned the 30% fee applied by the company to transactions made through the Google Play Store.
In addition, the indictment alleged that the company held an illegal monopoly, stifling competition in the Android app distribution market. To settle the lawsuit, Google agreed to pay $700 million. Of that amount, $630 million goes to a fund to be distributed to consumers and $70 million to states.
The move has also led to changes in the way Android apps are distributed. Alphabet (the holding company that controls Google) has pledged to simplify the process of downloading apps directly from developers’ websites, without the need to go through an app store.
In addition, developers will also be able to use an alternative billing method, without having to resort to Google Play’s own payment processing option.
Other lawsuits against Google continue
Google is currently a defendant in several antitrust lawsuits, which question whether the company has illegal monopolies in different areas.
The lawsuit filed by 36 states and Washington has been dismissed, but there is another one, filed by Epic Games. Last week, the U.S. court ruled that Google had created a monopoly in the app store market, and the financial compensation will be decided in January. Google, however, decided to appeal the ruling, and says the case is “far from over.”
In addition to the app stores, Google is also being sued by the U.S. Department of Justice on charges of monopoly in the search market.