Washington state joins antitrust suit against Google over app store management, commission fees
July 7, 2021 at 7:40 pm
Google building in SLU. (GeekWire Photo / James Thorne)
Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson on Wednesday joined a multistate, antitrust lawsuit targeting Google’s Play store as unfair to app developers who have little choice but to do business there.
The suit, filed in federal court and joined by 36 states and the District of Columbia, claims that Google created an unlawful monopoly with the structure of the Play store and the management of in-app payment services.
Similar to the federal antitrust claims about Apple and its control over the iOS App Store, the attorneys general assert that Google tightly controls one of two mobile app markets worldwide, takes an unfair cut of transactions within the market, and pays Android mobile phone companies to refrain from creating or using any app market that competes on the Android platform.