Did you know Google Abandoned Play Store’s Fee Per App Recommendation To Avoid Losses Worth Billions, Epic Games Lawsuit Proves

Search engine giant Google will never make a decision that could cost the company billions of dollars and the latest unveilings from the antitrust lawsuit by Epic Games has revealed just that.

At first, the Play Store recommended the company set a fixed fee per app, but that failed to come into existence after Google carried out its crackdown on how much losses would be incurred.

Any user would be deterred from using the feature if they knew a certain fee was attached and given how popular Google is, such pricing models failed to come into existence and were therefore abandoned. All of this was published in a set of documents that came into being on Thursday.

The company launched Project Everest two years back to rethink its billing model at the Play Store. This again was published by the documents that were rolled out as one part of the antitrust legal case from Epic Games.

Last week, Google lost the lawsuit that came into being thanks to Fortnite, causing the judge to side with the latter and penalize Google for its wrongful actions. The federal court found the company guilty of selfishly making use of monopoly behavior across its app store.

The news was further sparked by the huge amount of pressure that continued to mount thanks to regulators in action as well as developers regarding the massive 30% commission rates that were fired by Google Play in their direction.  

This was clearly a massive overreach on Google’s part and therefore they were left with no choice but to bow down to the jury’s ruling with a hefty fine attached. But that does not mean Google is backing down.

It added recently how they would be defending this status quo in the next several months via a presentation it carried out recently. They also added how a list of changes was on the rise that could provide support for a more reasonable law that ensures Google remains a leader and stops draconian laws from coming into play.

Project Everest has also been exploring the option to charge developers a certain figure in the name of service fees that would be related to adding apps on the Google Play Store, alongside a fee for installations, referrals, as well as any changes coming into existence.

The firm has estimated how such a model gave rise to massive room for huge losses ranging from $1 billion to $2 billion for a long list of apps while the figure set for games would be between $6 to $9.

But another option put forward had to do with employees suggesting app developers carry out the payments alone in return for giving Google a lower service amount in the name of a fee.

This change would lower the store’s yearly revenue rates between the $250 million to $1.3 billion figure. The latter all depends on the figure of users taking on various payment choices. Such a solution would mirror the settlement that Google attained worth $700 million last week. The latter had attorney generals from nearly 36 American states involved other than consumers.

But witnessing the massive loss by Google against Epic Games legally is said to give rise to a new threat in terms of a duopoly on the app store. Today, iPhone maker Apple generates nearly $200 billion every year and that determines how billions make use of mobile phones.

So many years were spent by Epic Games to try and bring about legal action against tech giants Apple and Google for their duopoly behavior. They’ve literally been allowed to selfishly charge huge amounts of commissions that go up to 30% for software developers who are already limited when it comes to the options they have surrounding them.

So when you come to think of it, we can see how Google’s mega loss may result in Apple making some serious changes to its App Store rules that are already getting plenty of scrutiny from many watchdogs and regulators located all over the globe.