Complaints against market monopoly in courtRelated NotesIn the testimony of Lawrence Koh, former head of Google Play game business development, it was revealed that Google had persuaded Epic Games to release "Fortnite" through the Google Play Store for US$1.47 million.
《要塞英雄》最早在2017年推出搶先體驗版本，並且在後續於2018年12月6日發行《要塞英雄：創造》，而後續推出的《要塞英雄：拯救世界》則支援Windows、macOS、PlayStation 4與Xbox One平台遊玩，至於《要塞英雄：創造》、《要塞英雄：大逃殺》更額外支援Nintendo Switch、iOS與Android裝置遊玩，並且在2018年11月便已經在全球累積超過2億名玩家。
In his testimony in court, Lawrence Koh stated that Google was worried that the performance of Fortnite in attracting players might lead more game companies to choose to leave the Google Play Store and distribute game content through their own platforms. This might result in Google being unable to profit from paid commissions on in-game purchases that are attractive enough to players. Therefore, Google hoped to convince Epic Games to keep Fortnite on the Google Play Store for $1.47 million.
Purnima Kochikar, vice president of partnerships at Google Play, also stated in her testimony that although this budget was approved within Google, it was not accepted by Epic Games, so it was eventually invested in other game companies to retain more game content that attracted players to the Google Play Store.
In his testimony, Lawrence Koh argued that Google's practice of using payments to secure its gaming platform's development advantage and prevent it from lagging behind competitors like Apple's App Store was not improper, and that such "investment" was well worthwhile. However, Epic Games responded by arguing that Google was using this method to consolidate its market dominance.
However, the court has not yet made a final ruling, so it is not possible to confirm whether Google's practices have been deemed by the court to constitute a monopoly.
Earlier, Prabhakar Raghavan, Google's senior vice president in charge of search and digital assistant services, alsoconfirmIn 2021, it cost $263 billion to use it as the default search engine for many browsers and to gain traffic from it.
