Is there something Google doesn’t want the world to know about its deal with Spotify? That’s what Google attorney Glenn Pomerantz suggested in Fortnite court this morning. Pomerantz argued that the court should seal portions of an upcoming exhibit revealing Google’s User Choice Billing agreement with Spotify — which lets Spotify use its own payment system for subscriptions while still giving Google a cut.
“Disclosure of the Spotify deal would be very, very detrimental for the negotiation we’d be having with those other parties,” Pomerantz told Judge James Donato, who is overseeing the Epic v. Google antitrust case. Pomerantz didn’t specify who the other parties were by name. He also said he was all right with “two numbers” being presented to the jury, but not with them being revealed aloud.
In 2020, as Epic began its fight against the “Apple tax” and “Google tax” on their respective app stores, it had a major ally: Spotify. Spotify was Epic’s single-biggest partner in the Coalition for App Fairness lobbying group. But then, in 2022, it partnered with Google as part of a limited pilot program called “User Choice Billing,” letting it bypass Google’s full fee on Android.
Google made it sound like User Choice Billing developers would simply pay four percentage points less, or up to 26 percent instead of up to 30 percent. I was personally skeptical about the unknown terms of the deal, though, and it seems that skepticism was justified. Reading between the lines, it sounds like Spotify is getting some sort of special treatment and that other app developers would want the same if they learned the terms of the deal.
In discussion, Epic lead attorney Gary Bornstein said as much. “There is a rate set much much lower than the rates you’ve been hearing about at trial, and that is going to be an important part of what you’re going to be hearing about,” he told the judge.
That’s not what Judge Donato initially took away from Google’s ask, though. This morning, he saw a potential shortcut through the Epic v. Google case and a solution to Epic’s complaint that Google anticompetitively locks down Play Store payment methods.
“Right now, Google is allowing users to post its own billing system?” asked the judge. “Did Google offer that to Epic?”
“I don’t know,” Pomerantz replied.
“Would that solve…