Epic Games and Match Look To Expand Their Antitrust Claims Against Google

Epic Games and Match Group are looking to fortify their antitrust lawsuits against Google by adding new counts to their initial complaint, filed last year, which illustrate the lengths Google supposedly went to in order to dominate the Android app market. From a report: The companies on Friday filed a motion to amend their complaints in their cases against Google, which now allege that Google paid off business rivals not to start other app stores that would put them in competition with Google Play. This would be a direct violation of U.S. antitrust law known as the Sherman Act, the amended complaint states. Now, Epic Games and Match Group are looking to add to their complaint with two new allegations specifying how Google had either paid or otherwise induced its potential competitors to agree to not distribute apps on Android in competition with the Play Store, including through their own competing app stores. Google, it says, had identified developers who were 'most at risk...of attrition from Play' and then approached them with an offer of an agreement. The complaint now deems this a 'per se' violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act, which prohibits 'every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations,' it says.

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