Match Group, the company that owns Tinder, filed a lawsuit against Alphabet (Google’s parent company) for “violating the federal and state laws of the United States and abusing its power” in the billing regulations of its application store, Play Store, from which the most famous dating application may soon disappear.
This allegation adds to ongoing cases brought by Fornite creators Epic Games against Apple and Google with the same allegation: that the tech giant forces app developers to use its billing system and charges them outrageous commissions of up to 30 percent in its stores, taking advantage of its advantage and positioning in the business for the iOs and Android systems.
Match demand, published on the webcomes after Google changed the rules of the Play Store to require that all applications mounted on its network use the internet giant’s payment system, which charges up to 30 percent for transactions.
“10 years ago, Match Group was Google’s partner. Now we are your hostage“.
“Google lured app developers to its platform with the guarantee that we could give users a choice about how to pay for the services they want, but once it monopolized the Android app distribution market with Google Play, taking advantage of the services of the most popular app developers, tried to ban alternative payment processing services within apps to be able to take a part of almost all transactions on Android, ”reads the lawsuit filed Monday in federal court in California.
And it is that, although users of smart Android mobile devices can download applications at their own risk on platforms other than Google’s Play Store, Match maintains that these alternatives do not support developers, since more than 90 percent of the time they are uses the technology platform to install content.
In fact, according to data from Statista and the technology consultancy IDCAndroid devices accounted for just over 84 percent of active digital units in 2020, when Google announced that in-app purchases would have to be processed as monetized digital goods and services in its system starting June 1. .
Tinder sues Google for unfair monopoly
Match Group asked the US Court to order Google to allow itself to bypass the Play Store billing system in its applications, in addition to awarding compensation for economic damages and legal fees.
“(Match tries) to avoid paying the significant value they receive from the mobile platforms on which they have built their business (…) like any business, we charge for our services, and like any platform, we protect users against fraud“Alphabe, the tech giant, replied.
Shar Dubey, the CEO of Match, assured that this lawsuit “is a measure of last resort” after not being able to reach a fair agreement with Google, who insists that developers who do not want to pay their fees can skip their digital store.
“It’s like saying: ‘you don’t have to take the elevator to get to the 60th floor of a building, you can always climb the outer wall’”.
“We have tried, in good faith, to resolve these issues with Google, but their insistence and threats to remove our branded apps from the Google Play Store before June 1 (unless they offer only their payment system and share revenue) they have left us no other option,” said Shar Dubey.
Likewise, the CEO warned that millions of dollars in income are at stake that they would have to pay to Google and that they could soon leave the Play Store if the resource is not favorable, since, according to them, the majority of Tinder users prefer their payment system, which allows installment payment plans, bank transfers and other functions that the technology does not offer.
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