Google agrees to pay $700m to settle one antitrust action in US

But concessions are time limited and those relating to billing are contentious

Google's parent company will pay a fine and alter Google Play policies to settle antitrust claims - but how big a win for smaller competitors and consumers is it?

Computing reported last week that Epic had won its antitrust case against Google, with a federal jury deciding that the Google Play app store effectively constituted an illegal monopoly. This was not the only antitrust case relating to Google Play that the company had been fighting. (In both of these cases Google was accused of deliberately losing Google Chat messages pertaining to the litigation.)

Earlier this year, proving that bipartisan action is still possible, all 50 US state attorneys general reached an agreement to settle another action which had been launched by several states and which claimed that Google used its monopoly power to boost the profile of its own apps over rival apps in Google Play on Android devices. The details of that agreement have just been made public, and the extent of exactly what Google has conceded is now clear.

In summary, Google has agreed to pay out $700 million, of which the vast majority ($629 million) will be made available to consumers who have overpaid for purchases from Google Play. Whilst $700 million is, by any objective measure, a huge sum of money, The Verge reports that this is the equivalent of approximately 21 days of operating profit from Google Play alone. Whether this fine is proportional is a matter of debate.

What fuels doubt about proportionality is that most of the accompanying measures which are designed to at least make a start of levelling the field for third party app developers are all time limited.

The longest lasting measure, which is the technical enablement of Android devices to allow third-party apps to be installed on mobile devices through means other than Google Play, will be in place for seven years.

Other measures such as Google letting developers offer an alternative in-app billing system next to Google Play, and Google not making companies exclusively put Google Play on phones, are limited to five years. Others such as Google not stopping OEMs from granting installer rights to preloaded apps will be time limited to four years only.

There are many more concessions, but they're all time limited. When viewed as a whole these measures might make Google Play feel improved from a third party perspective but the time limiting is contentious. Also, Google argued during the Epic trial that users could already install third party apps on their devices via a number of different routes, and also claimed that agreements with OEMS and other manufacturers didn't compel then to make Google Play the only app store available. If that was true then really, how significant are these concessions?

Concessions such as Google letting developers offer an alternative in-app billing system next to Google Play are also potentially worth less than seems apparent because the Epic trial proved that that User Choice Billing wasn't really much of a choice because the discount given by Google off its fee is so small that developers end up losing money when end users choose that option because they have to pay for alternative payment processing.

In a statement published yesterday, Corie Wright, Vice President of Public Policy at Epic Games said:

"Consumers will continue to overpay for digital goods as a result of Google's imposition of supracompetitive 30% fees for Google Play Billing or 26% junk fees on top of payments Google isn't involved in processing. Developers will also continue to be restricted in how they distribute their apps, and developers who choose to use a third party payment option will be forced to use Google's deceptively-labeled "user choice billing" system rather than having creative freedom over the design of same."

Judge James Donato presided over the Epic ruling, and has also been asked to approve this settlement, in addition to also deciding what remedies should be available to Epic. Both of these should happen in the New Year.