Sean Hollister

Judge Donato tells Android boss Sameer Samat that he already understands Google prefers the new proposed settlement to his injunction partly because it would settle litigation around the world. (Samat said he thinks international regulators may take their cues from the settlement too, because they see Epic as an advocate.) But he wants to know Google’s other motivations.

Samat says yes, he personally negotiated the new proposed settlement with Epic, starting last fall. He’s being questioned by Google’s lead attorney Glenn Pomerantz, as he’s Google’s witness; Epic and the judge have been asking all the questions up till now. Like Epic’s Sweeney, he says the reason to settle was to “reduce the amount of effort and energy” it would spend to keep fighting around the world.

“With the friction screens we lost 65 percent of users, with them removed we’re trending towards a 20 percent drop off rate,” he says, “which gives us confidence that installing stores from the web is a completely viable solution.” The point here is that Google and Epic’s new settlement no longer forces Google to host stores within its own store, but it does commit to removing the friction for web-based sideloading... as long as the stores are registered with Google’s proposed program and jump through whatever hoops Google has.

While Epic may be trying to make secret business deals with Google at the same time it’s trying to settle, Epic’s lead attorney Gary Bornstein made sure to ask Tim Sweeney to clarify one bit as soon as the courtroom re-opened for business. “Will the Epic Games Store get any special treatment from Android in the future under this deal?” he asked. Sweeney said no.

Sweeney told me he loved the bingo card we made during the trial, back in 2023. The courtroom is taking a 15-minute break now.

“I don’t see anything crooked about Epic paying Google off to encourage much more robust competition than they’ve allowed in the past,” he says, as the courtroom turns to page 8 of a term sheet that it’s not showing journalists... about Epic and Google’s secret new deal together.

That’s Judge James Donato to Epic CEO Tim Sweeney, asking him whether he thinks Google is an open platform today, when he called it a “fake open platform” in the past and had publicly given up on that ever changing.

Sweeney says he reached out in late September of last year. “I reached out to Google after the 9th Circuit Court had ruled on the case, and Sameer Samat was willing to discuss.”

Epic lead attorney Gary Bornstein, earlier: