Google Feared Samsung Galaxy Store and Tried To Quash It, Lawsuit Alleges

Google used anticompetitive practices in an attempt to 'preemptively quash' Samsung's Galaxy Store, and prevent it from becoming a viable competitor to its own Play Store. From a report: That's according to an antitrust lawsuit filed by a coalition of three dozen state attorney general, which accuses Google of illegally attempting to control app distribution on Android. The suit also alleges Google paid off app developers to stop them circumventing its store. The allegations challenge one of Google's core defenses of its policies, which is that unlike Apple's iOS rules, Android allows both competing app stores and side-loading apps directly. The lawsuit is effectively claiming that this openness is a facade, because while customers technically have the choice of where to get their apps from, Google's business practices have prevented a viable app store competitor from emerging.

'Google felt deeply threatened when Samsung began to revamp its own app store, the Samsung Galaxy Store,' the suit says, and describes Google's approach to the competing store as 'a threat it needed to preemptively quash.' The suit outlines a range of tactics Google allegedly used to prevent Samsung's store from becoming a viable competitor. It claims Google used revenue share agreements with Android phone manufacturers that 'outright prohibited' pre-installing some other app stores, and that it made 'a direct attempt to pay Samsung to abandon relationships with top developers and scale back competition through the Samsung Galaxy Store.'

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