More Americans are uniting against Google in court due to the company’s monopoly — 21 million users from 17 states have filed a class-action lawsuit against Google due to the vendor’s violation of antitrust laws regarding the operation of the Google Play Store.
The class action complaint has been accepted by a federal court in the Northern District of California. The antitrust action covers Play Store customers who have engaged with the platform since August 2016. According to customers, Google overpriced Android applications, despite collecting a 30% fee on purchases on its platform in most cases.
The plaintiffs estimated the total damage caused by the company at $4.7 billion. However, Google’s lawyers said the plaintiffs could not show exactly how the harm was caused. In turn, lawyers for the plaintiffs said that Google prohibited app developers from referring customers to competitors and used misleading warnings to refrain customers from downloading on third-party marketplaces.
The latest allegation of Google abusing market dominance is part of a bigger antitrust battle that includes similar lawsuits brought by prosecutors in roughly three dozen US states, Epic Games, Match Collection, and a group of smaller companies. In response, a Google spokeswoman stated that the business is examining the court’s decision to entertain a new class action case.
