YouTube pricing comes back to bite Google in UK app store trial

Filed 2h ago · Via Courthouse News · The Buffoon Desk

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Covert Affair

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: AllenS · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons

A consumer claim before Britain's Competition Appeal Tribunal accuses Google of inflating app prices through Play Store commissions reaching 30%, with lead claimant Elizabeth Coll representing UK users from October 2015 through July of this year.

Lawyers for Coll highlighted Google's own past explanation that YouTube charged more on Apple devices partly because of Apple's fees, arguing Google clearly understands that commissions raise consumer prices when someone else is collecting them. Google maintains its fees pay for ongoing services like updates, security checks and customer support.

The tribunal pressed both sides on practical mechanics: how to calculate damages if neither side's economic model holds up, and how later purchases could justify a commission charged at download. The trial is expected to run roughly eight weeks, with a judgment aimed for summer 2027, though Google wants to wait on a related Apple appeal.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

A company that explains away its rival's prices as fee pass-through and then tells a court the same logic doesn't apply to its own prices is just hoping nobody in the room owns a calculator. Thirty percent is thirty percent whether Google is paying it or collecting it, and the tribunal seems to have noticed that math doesn't change sides depending on who benefits. This one's going to take two more years to settle, which tells you plenty about how clean either argument really is.

Source: Read the original at Courthouse News → Scored: Covert Affair · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0