Google Releases Blog to Criticize Epic's Proposal
TapTechNews May 23rd news, last month, Epic urged the California judge to force Google to open its Play Store app store, thus embracing more intense competition. In response, Google first asked the court to dismiss this request, claiming that this measure would make the company "virtually impossible" to compete.
Today, Google also released a blog, vehemently criticizing Epic's behavior from six aspects, emphasizing that "Epic's proposal is beneficial only to itself and not to everyone else". TapTechNews translated Google's original text as follows:
Last month, Epic Games demanded that the US federal court implement harmful and unfounded adjustments to Android and the Google Play app store, which would damage the privacy, security and overall experience of consumers, developers and device manufacturers. Epic's demands not only far exceed the scope of the recent US trial judgment (we will object to this), but also are unnecessary due to the settlement agreement we reached last year with state attorneys general from every state and multiple territories.
We recently shared with the court the reasons why we strongly oppose Epic's proposal - at the hearing later this week, economic experts will further emphasize the reasons why Epic's proposed remedies are problematic and unnecessary. This includes:
Epic's proposal would expose Android users to security risks in third-party app stores: Epic's proposal cancels Google's ability to implement trust and security measures to protect the safety of Android users. Unlike iOS, Android allows OEMs to pre-install third-party app stores and allows users to directly download other app stores. In order to provide a choice while maintaining a better user experience, Android has taken common-sense measures to protect user safety and privacy - and if this proposal is passed, these measures will no longer be implementable.
Epic's proposal damages the privacy of Android users: According to Epic's proposal, Google will be forced to tell all third-party app stores "which apps the user has installed through Google Play", which will expose the user's personal app usage situation, including topics such as religion, politics or health, for Epic to profit. This is a clear violation of user privacy.
Epic's proposal makes it easier for users to be attacked by malicious apps: Unlike iOS, Android users can choose to side-load apps, which means they can install apps directly from the developer's website without going through the app store. We have already implemented important measures to ensure that users are still protected from potential malicious apps while enjoying the right to choose apps. However, Epic's proposal will force Google to remove these measures, thus severely weakening our ability to protect users from potential malicious apps.
Epic's proposal weakens the developer's control over app distribution: Developers have many app distribution channels on Android, but when they choose to use Google Play, they know the trust and security rules for maintaining platform security. However, Epic hopes to force all other developers to distribute their intellectual property content through multiple channels without their consent. According to this proposal, developers may not even know that their apps have appeared in third-party stores without Google's user protection measures, or in stores they originally didn't want to have a connection with.
Epic's proposal cuts off the developer's key source of income: As part of the state settlement agreement, we have agreed not to sign extensive exclusive agreements with developers, but Epic hopes to completely limit Go ogle's ability to provide any economic incentive measures to developers, even in a non-exclusive and per-app manner. Epic's proposed remedies will also prevent Google from cooperating with developers, thus not being able to provide any exclusive content through apps in the Play store, but this is a very common strategy to attract users and develop the business, and Epic is trying to limit this important business opportunity for all developers.
Epic's proposal will also damage the interests of device manufacturers: As part of the state attorneys general settlement agreement, we can ensure that any app store can freely compete on Android devices, but Epic's proposal will exclude Google Play from this process, thus weakening the competition and enabling competing app stores to bid at a lower price (referring to pre-installed apps in OEM devices), which will reduce the revenue that OEMs can obtain from pre-installing and pre-installing apps on devices, thus making those OEMs with already not much income worse off and may lead to an increase in the terminal price for consumers.