Yesterday I listened to Justice Beach of the Federal Court of Australia deliver a stunning and historic judgement against Apple and Google for their anti-competitive behaviour in relation to their App Store and Play Store respectively - monopoly commissions of ~30%, including on in-app payments, banning alternative app stores etc.
They were both found to have misused their substantial market power in various Store related markets with the effect (and in one case purpose) of substantially lessening competition.
The case was initially brought by Epic Games, makers of Fortnite, and grew to encompass a class action that stands to reap huge damages (more details below).
A more detailed summary of the judgement can be found here, but I want to focus on the bigger picture.
Three Major Anti-Trust Losses for Big Tech in US
In the last 2 years Google has been found to be an illegal monopolist in breach of the US Sherman Act in 3 key markets: Search, Ad Tech & App Store. Details can be found here.
These cases are now in the process of determining remedies and Google is likely to be, at least partly, broken up.
[Image by Grok created by my specific prompts regarding the topic of this post]
In anticipation of Google breakup Court orders Perplexity AI has just offered Google $34.5Bn for its flagship Chrome Browser, which provides a massive wealth of user data - essential food for AI's voracious appetite for data.
This is getting real!
Justice for a Decade of Abuse
For more than a decade Big Tech (Google, Facebook, Apple etc) has wantonly breached competition law, immensely harming consumers and the economy in almost every area of their activities. The anti-competitive abuses are the worst in global history, far exceeding those of Standard Oil in the 1900s or Microsoft in the 1990s.
When, in September 2018, I first started organising the Crypto Class Action against Facebook & Google's anti-competitive banning of Crypto Ads, I was alone in taking action against these giants.
Everyone told me that they were above the law and nothing could be done. Friends advised me that I would be endangering my safety to take them on.
When I commenced proceedings against Facebook & Google on 20 August 2020 I was the first of multiple anti-trust cases launched against Facebook and Google that year.
History of this EPIC case
On 13 August 2020, only a week before me, Epic filed their US anti-trust action against Google and Apple, which led to a full victory against Google, but only a partial victory against Apple.
In November 2020 Epic Games filed the Australian proceedings which have led to this historic judgment against Apple & Google.
Only in June 2022 did the case become a class action on behalf on people harmed by the anti-competitive behaviour of Google & Apple.
So you can see how ground breaking the Crypto Class Action was.
Huge Class Action Damages Incoming
The class action in the Epic Australian case is a Big Deal. While damages have not been fully determined, it is looking like they will be about 50% of all revenue earned by Google and Apple from their Stores from 2017-2022. This is based on them charging ~30% commission when a non-monopoly commission would have been around 15%.
I've done a rough estimate of the amount of damages involved with Grok's help and based on figures disclosed by the Judge and it is ~A$23 Billion.
This dwarfs the previously largest Australian class action payout on only A$494M.
This shows how private class actions can inflict very serious punishment on Big Tech for their anti-competitive abuses and is an important tool in deterring anti-competitive behaviour.