Project elektra anything short of a control stake will limit googles ability to influence the compan

Epic v. Google: everything we learned in Fortnite court

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Posted Nov 20, 2023 at 5:38 PM UTC

Project Elektra: “Anything short of a control stake will limit Google’s ability to influence the company’s trajectory.”

We’re now seeing the genesis of “Project Elektra” — which appears to be Google straight-up admitting in internal emails and presentations that it wanted to buy enough of Epic Games to make Fortnite a centerpiece of Android, partnering with Epic games stakeholder Tencent to do so if necessary.

“Investment was the only way people could realistically think of to sway them on Epic’s approach to Android,” reads part of an email from Google’s Don Harrison.

Here’s the full email from July 16, 2018:

We are bringing a package offering to BC on Thursday re Epic. Spoke to Jamie and I think we need a couple pages about what investment could look like and someone there to discuss (based on whatever we can glean publicly). We just did a prep call and investment was the only way people could realistically think of to sway them on Epic’s approach to Android — because it’s easy to imagine us investing billions at some ridiculous valuation (for everyone except for the corpdev folks).

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