Lhe law and justice are the foundation of life in society, but judges are humans like any other and the consistency of their decisions is not mechanical. This inconstancy of justice appeared again this Monday, December 11, when an American judge condemned Google in the case opposing it to the company Epic Games, publisher of the successful game Fortnite. The latter had however lost in a previous trial, in 2021, on the same grievances always brought by Epic, but this time against Apple. In both cases, the question was whether the two giants were abusing their monopoly on application stores in mobile phones to prevent competitors from offering other solutions.
Epic wants to set up its own store to market its games itself without paying an exorbitant right of passage to the Google Playstore or the Apple App Store. In both cases, the commission is in fact around 30% of the price of the purchases. And there are no alternatives, the majority of phones operating either in the Google-Android universe or in the Apple-iOS universe.
Please note, we are not talking about small amounts but about a market of around 500 billion dollars whose two guardians, the “gate keepers” say the Anglo-Saxons, tightly control the entry. We call this a “duopoly”, the most complete and stable formula of monopoly. We thus learn from the trial that Google would have earned nearly 12 billion dollars (11.1 billion euros) in profits in 2021 on this activity alone, with a margin of 70%. Hard to beat. For Apple, it is a substantial part of its services business which represents more than $80 billion in turnover.
Considerable income
According to Wall Street Journal, the two friends would earn more money on video games alone than publishers Microsoft, Activision, Nintendo and Sony combined. Activities that have become essential given the stagnation of smartphone sales around the world. And for this, they block any competing initiative in the name of the integrity of their operating systems. The collusion is such that Google pays Apple $20 billion every year to be its default search engine.
All over the world, authorities are trying to break this considerable income. The US Department of Justice is leading a historic trial against Google and the European Union is drafting legislation against the abuse of power of gate keepers. The monopoly is therefore eroding but too slowly. This will still take years of legal battle. The guardians are not ready to give up the key to their fortune.