Google fires back at Match Group for lawsuit over Play Store billing monopoly

silversurfer · May 10, 2022

Match Group, the parent company behind popular dating apps such as Match and Tinder, has filed a lawsuit against Google for its alleged monopoly over Play Store billing. It claims that it has done this by enforcing that all in-app purchases should go through Google's billing mechanism, of which the company takes a commission ranging from 15-30% depending upon which tier your app falls in.

As noted by The Verge, Match Group has accused Google of misleading developers:

Google lured app developers to its platform with assurances that we could offer users a choice over how to pay for the services they want. But once it monopolized the market for Android app distribution with Google Play by riding the coattails of the most popular app developers, Google sought to ban alternative in-app payment processing services so it could take a cut of nearly every in-app transaction on Android.

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In response, Google has published a sternly worded blog post calling Match Group's campaign cynical and accusing it of attempting to be a freeloader off Google's investments rather than being a "responsible partner".

The software giant claims that Match Group has benefited massively from Google Play policies in the past, but now it is doing all it can to avoid paying entirely. Google says that in order to succeed in this effort, Match Group is employing tactics like lobbying policymakers, misusing the court, and hinting to investors that switching to an alternative payment mechanism would "exempt them from paying for the valuable services they receive from Google Play".

Google fires back at Match Group for lawsuit over Play Store billing monopoly

Google has published a detailed defense against Match Group's claims that its Play billing mechanism allows it to monopolize the market. It has accused the lawsuit campaign of being cynical and false.

www.neowin.net

silversurfer · May 23, 2022

Google Play's in-app billing crackdown sure is causing a lot of conflicts with Android's biggest app developers. Google recently decided to enforce a long-standing Play Store rule that says Google Play must be the one-and-only in-app purchase provider for apps downloaded from the Play Store, locking out developers from using their own payment solutions.

The latest huge developer that is unhappy with Google's new policy is Match Group, the owner of Tinder and several other dating apps. Match sued Google on May 9 for "strategic manipulation of markets, broken promises, and abuse of power in requiring Match Group to use Google's billing system to remain in the Google Play Store."

On Friday, the two companies reached an agreement to not restrict Match Group's Play Store access until the lawsuit concludes.

The two companies put out dueling press releases, describing the situation very differently. Match's blog post is titled "Google Concedes Key Issues on Google Play Policies," while Google has a more stern title: "The facts about the temporary Match Group agreement."