On 12 December 2024, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Google’s app store, the Play Store, operated as an illegal monopoly and ordered the company to open Android devices to rival app stores and payment systems. The decision, the latest in a series of antitrust defeats for the search giant, struck at the heart of its digital empire.
The case, brought by the makers of the video game Fortnite, focused on the fees Google charged developers for in-app purchases and the agreements that kept other app stores off Android phones. The judge found Google had used its market power to lock developers and consumers into its store, and ordered sweeping changes: rival stores must be allowed, downloads must be permitted from the web, and Google could not pay phone makers to keep its store exclusive.
Google called the remedies a threat to the safety of the Android ecosystem and began an appeal, but the ruling joined an expanding string of losses for the company, which was also fighting the landmark search-monopoly case it lost in August. The decisions, collectively, marked the beginning of the most serious dismantling of Big Tech market power in a generation.