Supreme Court rejects pause on Google app store overhaul 

WASHINGTON (CN) — The Supreme Court refused Monday to delay changes to Google’s app store that the tech giant warned could leave millions of Android users vulnerable to malicious actors.

The court did not explain its decision, which came in a brief order with no noted dissents.

Google lost an antitrust suit from Fortnite maker Epic Games, but the tech giant asked the justices to put off court-ordered changes to its app store until the high court decides if it wants to review Google’s appeal.

Epic Games claimed that Google and Apple’s app store policies constituted an illegal monopoly. The video game developer wanted the tech giants to distribute Epic’s apps through their stores.

The Ninth Circuit found Apple’s app store to be a lawful form of competition against Google, but a jury held Google liable under the Sherman Act — a federal law prohibiting monopolies and anticompetitive business practices. Google argued that its policies were designed to compete with Apple.

The appeals court disagreed, upholding the jury verdict and affirming an injunction overhauling Google’s app store known as the Play store. Under the injunction, Play’s 2 million-plus apps become available on demand through competitors’ app stores, and Play must allow competitor stores to be available for download. Google must also let developers use external links in their apps on Play.

The tech giant asked the Supreme Court to limit sections of the injunction requiring external links. Google said that the link requirement will make it easier for developers to avoid compensating the tech giant.

“All this, in turn, makes it more difficult for Google to sustain the business model that has allowed it to provide those services for free to the vast majority of developers who offer their apps and digital content for free,” Google wrote.

Play store changes are still a year away, but Google pushed the justices to intervene before the company must undertake substantial design and engineering resources to meet deadlines.

“Those measures will come at an enormous cost in terms of lost time and expenditures at least in the tens of millions of dollars,” Google wrote. “A stay pending this court’s review is therefore essential to ensure that any relief this court affords will truly be effective, and to avoid unnecessary harm for the over 100 million nonparty users and hundreds of thousands of nonparty developers who will be affected by these remedies.”

Epic Games said that the July 2026 deadline negated Google’s claimed harms, noting that the justices will have ruled on the tech giant’s petition long before then. The Fortnite maker said the security risks posed by third-party links were already addressed by the lower court.

“Google’s attempt to backfill the record through scaremongering amicus briefs should be rejected, as should its request for this court to second-guess the lower courts’ assessment of the record evidence,” Epic Games wrote. “In any event, the sky will not fall if links appear in apps; indeed, Google already allows links for certain purposes, such as purchases of physical goods and services.”

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