A federal judge ordered Google on Thursday to strip out what he called "anticompetitive friction" from the Play Store's process for installing rival app stores, the latest enforcement move in the years-long antitrust fight between Google and Epic Games. US District Judge James Donato gave Google one week to fix the specific problems Epic identified in court, according to The Verge's account of the hearing.
The ruling followed a live courtroom demonstration by Epic's legal team of just how difficult Google has made it to find and install a competing app store. Searching the Play Store for "store for apps" surfaced only physical retailers like Walmart, not Aptoide, the first third-party app store admitted under the court's remedy order. Searching directly for "Aptoide" or "app store" triggered a banner users had to click through to a separate page, rather than showing results the way any other app search would. "That is not acceptable," Donato said from the bench, according to a separate report from Ars Technica. "That has to be fixed. I want every possible variation that's even only 70 percent properly phrased."
Donato also objected to the installation flow itself: users are shown a "view" button rather than an "install" button when choosing to add a third-party store, requiring an extra step before installation can begin. "You don't get that when you're looking at Apple Music," Donato noted, ordering Google to change the button to read "install" directly. Google's counsel agreed on the spot to make both fixes within the judge's one-week deadline.
Three years of court-ordered remedies
The hearing is the newest chapter in a case that dates back nearly three years, when a jury unanimously found Google held an illegal monopoly over Android app distribution. Judge Donato has spent roughly two years since then overseeing how Google implements remedies, including a requirement that it carry rival app stores inside Google Play itself and give them access to its full app catalog for several years. Aptoide became the first rival store to be admitted under that order; Epic's own storefront has not yet launched inside Google Play, though Ars Technica reported the two companies have separately struck a broader global partnership even as they remain opposing parties in the US case.
Epic's attorney, Yonatan Even, argued in court that the friction wasn't a minor UX quirk but a deliberate deterrent — one that could discourage even large companies like Amazon from launching their own Android storefronts if doing so meant disappearing from normal search results. Google's lawyers countered that app stores are a special permissions category and therefore warrant the extra confirmation step; Donato rejected that reasoning outright.
Google has not issued a public statement beyond its agreement in court to comply. The company can be expected to make the ordered changes within days, given the judge's tight timeline and instruction to contact him directly if any technical obstacle arises. For Epic, full vindication of its years-long case likely hinges on what happens next: whether the smoother installation path finally makes it commercially viable to bring Epic's own storefront into the Google Play ecosystem it fought so long to open up.
