Sundar Pichai to testify in Epic Games vs Google case next week

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San Francisco. Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai are likely to testify in a US court next week in Epic Games’ lawsuit against Google.

The Fortnite game developer plans to call Pichai as a witness on Tuesday, The Verge reports. His allegation is that Google Play is an illegal monopoly.

“In court documents, Google requested use of a platform in the courtroom on Tuesday, suggesting that Pichai may in fact be present to testify,” the report said.

A lawsuit has been filed after Google removed Fortnite from the Play Store.

Epic is arguing that Google’s monopoly control over the Google Play Store for Android smartphones violates both state and federal antitrust laws.

Meanwhile, the tech giant told the court that Google offered a deal worth $147 million to game developer Epic Games to launch its popular game Fortnite on the Google Play Store.

Purnima Kochikar, vice president of Play partnerships at Google, said in her testimony that the deal was approved and presented to Epic, but not accepted, The Verge reports.

The deal will see the money distributed to Epic over a three-year period of “incremental funding” (ending in 2021).

In a document justifying the deal, Google wrote that “Fortnite’s absence could result in a direct revenue loss of $130 million (up to $250 million) with Play” and a potential revenue loss of $550 million (3.6 billion Dollars) may have a downstream impact. “Other developers will suffer losses if there is widespread infection.”

The Epic vs. Google trial began on Monday this week. Google has defended its 30 percent cut on app transactions through its Play Store.

–IANS

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