Google doesn’t want people to know the details of its billing agreement with Spotify.
Under the company’s User Choice Billing initiative, Spotify offers Android users its own billing system. This allows users to pay with options other than Google Play. Google previously stated the initiative would lead developers to pay lower service fees; the tech giant still gets a cut of the earnings.
According to The Verge, Google’s legal team wants to seal an exhibit detailing the agreement with Spotify. Attorney Glenn Pomerantz made the request Wednesday during the antitrust case between Epic Games and Google.
“Disclosure of the Spotify deal would be very, very detrimental for the negotiation we’d be having with those other parties,” Pomerantz said. He further detailed the court could share “two numbers” contained in the exhibit with jurors but requested they not be shared out loud. This is the second such trial Google has faced in recent weeks
Epic’s lawsuit stems from a 2020 incident involving direct billing that saw Apple and Google remove Fortnite from its respective app stores. The suit involving Apple has already been presented to the court.
As The Verge notes, the lawsuit came before Google introduced User Choice Billing, and the company has previously stated that such an option wouldn’t work for them.
“The economic terms of the proposal that we are aware of based on public information — in our view, this is not a real option for developers,” Gary Bornstein, an attorney for Epic, said. “This is trying to make the concerns in this matter seem as though they have been resolved when it’s clear from the proposal that they have not.”
Via: The Verge
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