The 144-page complaint, filed on Wednesday, alleges Google entered “into agreements” with cell phone manufacturers to guarantee Android phones offer customers Google Play as the “primary (and often only)” mobile app store to purchase and download applications; and “illegally tied its in-app payment services to its app distribution services by requiring any app distributed through the Google Play Store” to use Google Play Billing for in-app purchases.
Representatives with Google — which is headquartered in Mountain View — could not be reached on Wednesday evening.
Bonta said people who own Androids are given limited options and are “effectively stuck using” the Google Play app store for mobile applications, where Bonta said they “pay a premium.”
The complaint alleges that Google uses “its durable monopoly power in the Android in-app payment processing market to extract a supracompetitive 30% commission from consumers.”
“This anticompetitive behavior also stings consumers by limiting their options,” Bonta said. “A more competitive app marketplace could open innovation, leading to more choice, better payment processing, improved customer service, and enhanced data security.”
The complaint was filed by attorneys general in Utah, New York, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Virginia, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia.
The attorney general’s office said the state Department of Justice is also litigating another antitrust lawsuit, a federal lawsuit, against Google that alleges the company violated federal antitrust laws by “entering into exclusionary business agreements that shut out competitors and suppressed innovation.” Former Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced in December 2020 that the California Department of Justice was joining that federal lawsuit.
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