Judge Grants Google Request to Pause Changes in Play Store

Google has succeeded in convincing a US District Court judge in California to put the brakes on an injunction requiring the company to open up its Play Store to third-party app stores. The Friday decision by Judge James Donato came a day after Google filed a request for an emergency stay with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Donato’s decision will allow time for the appeals court to consider that request.

The decision is the latest chapter in an ongoing legal battle between game developer and publisher Epic Games and companies including Google, Apple and Samsung over making third-party app stores available to users on their platforms. 

Epic has balked at fees and restrictions when it has offered games on Apple’s App Store and Google Play and has sought other avenues to offer its games, including Fortnite. An early October ruling against Google would have required the company to make changes to its Play Store by Nov. 1. 

In the emergency stay motion and a fact sheet published by Google, the company argued that the task of making changes to the Play Store by then is too great to accomplish without harming safety and privacy and “puts users at risk.”

After Donato’s decision, Google said in a statement, “We’re pleased with the District Court’s decision to temporarily pause the implementation of dangerous remedies demanded by Epic, as the Court of Appeal considers our request to further pause the remedies while we appeal.”

A statement from Epic Games had a different take on the decision.

“The pause in the injunction is merely a procedural step to allow the Ninth Circuit time to decide Google’s request to stay the injunction pending appeal,” the statement read in part.

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In the fact sheet, Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president for regulatory affairs, says that 500,000 US developers and 100 million Android users in the US could be made vulnerable by the changes Google would have needed to make to meet the original order’s deadline. 

“This wouldn’t just hurt Google – this would have negative consequences for Android users, developers and device manufacturers who have built thriving businesses on Android,” Mulholland wrote. 

Some of the justifications in the ruling and fact sheet point to the dangers of external links within the Play Store to external app downloads, eliminating protections within billing Google says its Play service offers and rushing the process of making changes.

“The jury’s verdict and the court’s injunction were clear: Google’s anticompetitive Play Store practices are illegal,” Epic Games said in a statement sent to CNET.

“Google is merely fear mongering and falsely using security as a pretext to delay the changes mandated by the court. This is Google’s last ditch effort to protect their control over Android and continue extracting exorbitant fees. The court’s injunction must go into effect swiftly so developers and consumers can benefit from competition in the mobile ecosystem.”

Google has been fighting monopoly rulings on other fronts as well: In August, a federal judge ruled Google violated antitrust law in relation to its dominance in the search business.