Legal dispute between The Google And Match Group faces a new chapter: This week, Search Giant accused its owner tinder Not fulfilling its part of an agreement between the two as well as taking advantage of the possibility of adopting their own payment mechanisms. The information comes from the Bloomberg website.
In May this year, An interim agreement has been entered into Google will pave the way for implementing its own payment tools, while Match Group will take advantage of the discount and, in return, give consumers an alternative to using the Play Store owner’s billing system. All this, of course, when you make purchases and subscriptions (in this case, you contribute 30% commission) to relationship apps.
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According to Google, Match Group “had no intention of fulfilling the contractual terms of the agreement”. Mountain View claims that the other party’s intent was, in fact, not to pay anything for using the internal systems, something that would put Match apps “in an advantage over other developers”.
Google will abuse the feature
“Google doesn’t want anyone else to sue them, so their counterclaims are designed as warnings,” Match Group said in an email to Bloomberg. With the indictment, Google could weaken the interim agreement and, as a result, have room to restrict the distribution of Match apps to the Play Store — including the ability to remove them from the Store.
The legal battle began last year, when the owner of Tinder accused Google of abusing its controlling position in the Play Store to charge abusive commissions from developers. At the time, pressure also came from Epic Games which, for a similar reason, referred to the company’s monopoly.
It didn’t take long and Google reviewed the amounts paid for using the billing tools. Developers who don’t reach $1 million in revenue within a year will only need to contribute 15% of every app purchase. The decision, however, did not satisfy everyone, especially the major distributors.
Will Tinder leave the Play Store?
It’s still too early to say Google will take more drastic action against the Match Group — such as removing the company’s apps from the Play Store or banning the platform’s developer. However, the relationship between the two parties is at a delicate moment and the coming months will be decisive for the legal battle.
The fact is that removing an application from the Store on Android is not so difficult – it reduces the access of the application, but does not make it impossible for users to download it. Similar to what happens with Fortnite, the Match Group can distribute software outside the store (direct download or platform-specific).
source: Bloomberg
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