Google was forced to calculate the cost of Epic’s biggest request on the Play Store

Winning the lawsuit against Epic Games, however, asking Google to allow the Epic Games Store to operate inside the Google Play Store and access all of Epic’s available applications there seems a bit unreasonable. But surprisingly, the court is seriously considering it. Judge James Donato ordered Google to calculate the costs of implementing these requests before June 24.

Specifically, Google needs to report technical and economic details if it must provide “Category Access” and “App Store Transfer” to competing app stores for up to 6 years. Additionally, the report may also cover the technical and economic costs of distributing third-party app stores through the Google Play Store.

“Catalog Access” and “App Store Transfer” are the main requests Epic makes. If approved, this means Google must allow other app stores to access the entire Google Play app store.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24543735-epic-google-proposed-permanent-injunction#document/p8

The judge also ordered Google to consider hosting third-party app stores in the Google Play Store for a period of six years. Once Google reports its costs, Epic will have the opportunity to question Google’s experts and engineers about the accuracy of the report, before a final hearing on August 14.

In the previous trial, Judge Donato was skeptical of Google’s arguments but also said that some of Epic’s requests were “too broad and vague.”

Epic is currently developing a version of its game store for Android.