The IT Nerd

The attorneys general of 36 states and Washington, D.C., sued Google “alleging that the company illegally abused its power over developers that distribute apps through the Google Play store on mobile devices,” according to Bloomberg:

State attorneys general are targeting the fees Google takes from developers for purchases and subscriptions inside apps. The complaint was filed by 36 states and the District of Columbia in San Francisco federal court Wednesday. The complaint marks a new attack by government officials in the U.S. against the search engine’s business practices. The Justice Department and a group of states filed separate complaints over Google’s search business last year, while another state coalition sued over Google’s digital advertising business. The states are taking on Google even after a federal judge in Washington last week threw out their antitrust lawsuit against Facebook. That case accused Facebook of illegally crushing competition by buying Instagram and WhatsApp because it saw them as threats to its business. The judge said the states waited too long to challenge the acquisitions.

This article didn’t have anything about the states suing Apple, who has a similar app policy as Google. Actually, Apple’s stance is worse since they prevent users from side-loading apps or using alternate app stores. So this seems like a strange lawsuit to me. And I wonder if it will actually go the distance. I guess we’ll see.

UPDATE: There’s a story that outlines the accusation that Google used anticompetitive practices in an attempt to “preemptively quash” Samsung’s Galaxy Store, and prevent it from becoming a viable competitor to its own Play Store. 

The US Justice Department plans to accuse Google of maintaining an illegal monopoly over search and search advertising in a lawsuit to be filed on Tuesday, the government’s most significant legal challenge to a tech company’s market power in a generation, according to officials at the agency:

In its suit, to be filed in a federal court in Washington, D.C., the agency will accuse Google, a unit of Alphabet, of illegally maintaining its monopoly over search through several exclusive business contracts and agreements that lock out competition, said the officials, who were not authorized to speak on the record. Such contracts include Google’s payment of billions of dollars to Apple to place the Google search engine as the default for iPhones. The agency will argue that Google, which controls about 80 percent of search queries in the United States, struck agreements with phone makers using Alphabet’s Android operating system to pre-load the search engine on their phones and make it hard for rival search engines to become a replacement. By using contracts to maintain its monopoly, competition and innovation has suffered, the suit with argue.

The suit reflects the pushback against the power of the nation’s largest corporations, and especially technology giants like Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple. Conservatives like President Trump and liberals like Senator Elizabeth Warren have been highly critical of the concentration of power in a handful of tech behemoths. Attorney General William P. Barr, who was appointed by Mr. Trump, has played an unusually active role in the investigation. He pushed career Justice Department attorneys to bring the case by the end of September, prompting pushback from lawyers who wanted more time and complained of political influence. Mr. Barr has spoken publicly about the inquiry for months and set tight deadlines for the prosecutors leading the effort.

This will be interesting to watch because this can be the first of many lawsuits to be filed by the feds. Lawyers at Amazon, Facebook and Apple have to be very worried as it looks like Google is going to be made an example of. If and when the lawsuit gets announced, I’ll update this post.

UPDATE: The Lawsuit has dropped.

UPDATE #2: Google calls the lawsuit “deeply flawed” in a blog post.