Google Considered Buying 'Some or All' of Epic During Fortnite Clash, Court Documents Say (theverge.com) 16
Google considered buying Epic Games as the companies sparred over Epic's Fortnite Android app, according to newly unsealed court filings. From a report: Last night, Google lifted some of its redactions in Epic's antitrust complaint against Google, which Epic amended and refiled last month. The complaint still omits many details about Google's dealings with specific companies, but the new details reflect internal Google communications about competition on the Android platform. Epic claims Google was threatened by its plans to sidestep Google's official Play Store commission by distributing Fortnite through other channels, and in an unredacted segment, it quotes an internal Google document calling Epic's plans a "contagion" threatening Google.
Here's Epic's description of the situation: "Google has gone so far as to share its monopoly profits with business partners to secure their agreement to fence out competition, has developed a series of internal projects to address the 'contagion' it perceived from efforts by Epic and others to offer consumers and developers competitive alternatives, and has even contemplated buying some or all of Epic to squelch this threat."
Here's Epic's description of the situation: "Google has gone so far as to share its monopoly profits with business partners to secure their agreement to fence out competition, has developed a series of internal projects to address the 'contagion' it perceived from efforts by Epic and others to offer consumers and developers competitive alternatives, and has even contemplated buying some or all of Epic to squelch this threat."
Just what we need (Score:3)
More consolidation of big tech power and influence in the hands of Google.
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Thanks Apple
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Thanks Obama! /sarcasm-meme
Understanding the risk they face (Score:3)
Goes against the whole "don't be evil" (former) mantra, of course
Re:Understanding the risk they face (Score:5, Funny)
Does that mean Amazon will be buying the US government then?
Re:Understanding the risk they face (Score:4, Funny)
Why would they buy their own property, it makes no sense.
Smart move. (Score:5, Funny)
This was before they wised up ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Clearly something changed between this history and announcing improved support for third party app stores in Android 12.
I suspect Google wouldn't even mind if they get fined for their past behaviour, because that judgement would be the beginning of a much bigger problem for Apple. I suspect that part of doing a 180 was realising how good it would be for them if Apple got forced into allowing third party app stores.
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I suspect that Google feared that Fortnight would be the killer app for a viable third-party game store. An obvious alternative would be to buy Epic.
If Apple's app-store practices get hammered, Google can point to several third-party app stores: "It isn't us or nothing, it's us or several alternatives that take 5 minutes to install." I'm sure Google would prefer that the app stores be for niche products, rather than blockbusters. But they know they can't have everything.
Depends on who is wearing the hat (Score:2)
When Apple does these strategies they are "Protecting the customer security"
In this version of the story, Google are being portrayed as evil for protecting system security.
I smell bullshit.
Epic doesn't just threaten Google (Score:1)
They threaten gaming on every platform. They saw a chance to make a buck and they want in, they don't care if they destroy gaming as we know it in the process. They are intentionally throwing money at attempting to buy market share rather than develop a compelling product and suing everyone and anything they can in the process to try and secure even more profit for themselves.
They are toxic to the gaming community on the whole.
Google may have given up it's do no evil mantra, but at least we knew where we st
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Epic has their Unreal Engine, which has become one of the main driving engines in game development. If you still like to play video games these days it's difficult to get around games that use Unreal Engine. And it shouldn't be surprising at all.
It's a decent engine that produces good grap
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You know you have some serious chip on your shoulder when Google, with all their spying and controlling the media narrative through youtube and google search results, and Apple are somehow the lesser evil by comparison.
It's not a chip on the shoulder. It's an analysis of things which directly impact my personal life and things I care about.
Google hoovers up my data, yeah okay that's evil but it's a modern reality. Apple uses slave labour, yeah that's evil, but that doesn't impact me. Both of them exert huge control over their suppliers, yeah okay that's evil, but me as an end user actually only sees the direct benefit of a single source system. Epic's actions directly and negatively affect me.
Epic's Unreal Engine is fanta
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What I don't understand here is the seemingly unilateral blame for Epic store exclusives.
Epic offers them a bunch of money and then they 'enjoy grabbing their angles and moan'. Because they'd rather "whore out" instead of caring about maintaining their playerbase on other platforms.
Well, maybe the developers cared, but those who manage the finances certainly didn't care enough, making some business decisions to ditch part o
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Oh don't get me wrong. The developers are absolutely to blame too. But it was Epic who enabled them by offering this. I'd be okay with if if Epic were Oracle as well. Oracle at least don't pretend to be nice. But here is Epic saying they are doing this for the good of the games, tearing down monopolies, and saving PC gaming, which is literally wrong, wrong, and wrong.
Microsoft could have done the same, EA could have done the same, Ubi could have done the same, Sony, Nintendo, hell even Apple or google would be capable to lock you into some exclusivity contract if you were willing.
Yeah. Kinda my point. They didn't, at least on the PC platform anyway. These companies will still lock to the platform to some degree. Nintend