Google Files Emergency Stay Motion in Epic Games Ruling, Citing Security Concerns

Google is trying to put the brakes on a court ruling requiring the company to open up its Play Store to third-party app stores. Earlier this month, Judge James Donato ruled in a California US District Court that the company has an illegal monopoly with its Google Play Store on Android devices. Google has already appealed that decision.

Now, Google has filed an emergency stay motion ahead of an expected Friday appeals ruling. The company also published a fact sheet about the motion from Lee-Anne Mulholland, vice president of regulatory affairs at Google, in which she says that the task of making changes to the Google Play store by Nov. 1 is too large to accomplish without harming safety and privacy and "puts users at risk."

"If allowed to stand, this District Court order threatens Google Play's ability to provide a safe and trusted user experience, thereby undermining the Android ecosystem's ability to compete with Apple's iOS," Mulholland wrote.

The ruling and Google's new motion against it are part of an ongoing legal battle between game developer and publisher Epic Games and companies including Google, Apple and Samsung over making third-party app stores available to users on their platforms. Epic has balked at fees and restrictions when it has offered games on Apple's App Store and Google Play and has sought other avenues to offer its games, including Fortnite.

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In the fact sheet, Mulholland says that 500,000 US developers and 100 million Android users in the US could be made vulnerable by the changes Google would need to make to meet the order's deadline. "This wouldn't just hurt Google – this would have negative consequences for Android users, developers and device manufacturers who have built thriving businesses on Android," Mulholland wrote. 

Some of the justifications in the ruling and fact sheet point to the dangers of external links within the Play Store to external app downloads, eliminating protections within billing Google says its Play service offers and rushing the process of making changes.

"The jury's verdict and the court's injunction were clear: Google's anticompetitive Play Store practices are illegal," Epic Games said in a statement sent to CNET. "Google is merely fear mongering and falsely using security as a pretext to delay the changes mandated by the court. This is Google's last ditch effort to protect their control over Android and continue extracting exorbitant fees. The court's injunction must go into effect swiftly so developers and consumers can benefit from competition in the mobile ecosystem."

A ruling on Google's initial emergency stay appeal to the early October decision was expected Friday, Oct. 18, but this new motion appears to be adding additional urgency to the company's request. 

Google has been fighting monopoly rulings on other fronts as well: In August, a federal judge ruled Google violated antitrust law in relation to its dominance in the search business.