36 States Sue Google Over How it Manages its Play Store, Alleg | G3 News

36 States Sue Google Over How it Manages its Play Store, Alleging Damage to Both Consumers and App Developers

@G3News: A bipartisan group of state attorneys general filed an antitrust lawsuit targeting Google’s app store Wednesday, adding to the tech giant’s mounting regulatory woes, as government officials at both the federal and state level bring challenges to its business practices.

Thirty-six states, including Utah, New York, North Carolina and Tennessee, as well as the District of Columbia, brought the suit.

It argues that Google maintains a monopoly in the market for distributing apps for the Android operating system, which it owns and develops and is used by most of the world’s smartphones. The suit claims that Google favors its Play Store over other app stores available on Android devices and argues that developers have “no reasonable choice” but to distribute their apps through the store.

“Google has taken steps to close the ecosystem from competition and insert itself as the middleman between app developers and consumers,” the state attorneys general allege.

“Google has served as the gatekeeper of the Internet for many years, but, more recently, it has also become the gatekeeper of our digital devices — resulting in all of us paying more for the software we use every day,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement.
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