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The curious case of Epic Games: how the developer beat Google but not Apple
(www.theguardian.com)
Crucially, they said, a jury rather than a judge decided the Google case, meaning the gaming company’s underdog narrative likely held more sway. Google was also repeatedly caught misbehaving. From damning internal documents to missing and deleted evidence, the company seemed to take every chance it could to present itself as the very archetype of a powerful monopolist sneakily trying to muddy the truth, experts said.
And here are some examples of those internal documents:
In particular, Epic repeatedly pointed to an initiative called “Project Hug” where the company paid major game developers like Activision and Nintendo millions of dollars in incentives to keep their wares in the Play store and persuade them not to create their own rival stores. The stakes were high. Activision alone was reportedly offered $360m. Epic was offered $147m to keep Fortnite on Google Play. Google documents reportedly referred to Epic in this case as a worrisome “contagion” that could cause other developers to defect.
A jury is going to see that as bribery and not look favorably on Google.
That setting automatically deleted messages within 24 hrs.
Google’s sloppy handling of documents struck a nerve with Judge Donato during the trial. Around a week before the verdict, the judge slammed Google’s handling of evidence as “a frontal assault on the fair administration of justice”... Donato said Google action’s amount to “the most serious and disturbing evidence I have ever seen in my decade on the bench with respect to a party intentionally suppressing relevant evidence”.
The judge calling out the defendent certainly doesn't help.
"The big difference between Apple and Google is Apple didn’t write anything down,” Sweeney said, according to CNBC. Epic Games did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.
That says all I need to know about the difference between these two cases.