Written by Haim Ravia and Dotan Hammer
Google agreed to pay $90 million to settle a legal dispute with app developers who alleged that Google has abused its power to impose legal and technical barriers on the app ecosystem, charged app developers fees of up to 30% of in-app purchases, and forced them to only use Google’s billing system. The settlement would resolve a class action suit litigated in the U.S. Federal District Court for the Northern District of California.
The settlement agreement states that the amount payable by Google will be held in a fund to support app developers who generated annual revenues of $2 million or less in the years 2016-2021. According to estimates, about 48,000 app developers will be eligible to apply to receive money from the fund. The settlement is currently awaiting approval by the court.
Later this month, the Russian telecommunication authority fined Google $347 million, following repeated warnings for failing to remove ”materials promoting extremism and terrorism” and “anti-Russia” content – i.e., content related to the war in Ukraine – across its platforms, particularly YouTube.
