According to a Reuters news agency report, the presiding judge said in a 27-page order that the plaintiffs had established the legal element of “commonality” and other factors to form a class action. A class action, or class-action lawsuit, is a type of lawsuit where one of the parties is a group of people represented by a member or members of that group.
Class members are Google Play Store individual customers in 12 countries, including Ohio, Michigan and Georgia, in addition to American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, said the report. They are seeking $4.7 billion in damages.
What Google has to say
Google has denied the claims and defended its Play Store business practices. “We are evaluating the decision, and after that, we will evaluate our options,” a Google spokesperson was quoted as saying.
Then, attorneys for Google claimed that the plaintiffs failed to show how they were tortured – an argument that was rejected by the judge.
36 states sued Google
In July of this year, a group of 36 states and the District of Columbia sued Google claiming that Google abuses its market power through the Play Store and imposes aggressive terms on software developers. App developers claim they have issues with the way Google makes them use its own system for in-app purchases and charges a 30% commission.
“Due to Google’s anticompetitive behavior, Google Play The store’s market share – which is more than 90 percent – is under no credible threat, and market forces cannot put pressure on its supracompetitive commission,” the complaint said.
At the time, Google said that “the lawsuit ignores the options in Android and Google Play.”
“Android and Google Play provide openness and choice that no other platform does. This lawsuit is not about helping minors or protecting consumers. This is about boosting a handful of major app developers who want to benefit from Google Play without paying for it,” Wilson White, senior director public policy at Google, said in a blog post.
Google also stated that the allegations where it is claimed that consumers and developers have no other choice to use Google Play are not true. “Choice has always been a core principle of Android. Device makers and operators can preload competing application stores alongside Google Play on their devices. In fact, most Android devices are shipped with two or more preloaded application stores,” added the executive.
