Tinder owner Match Group said it has filed a lawsuit against Alphabet’s Google to obstruct the tech giant from removing its apps from the Play Store.
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The company, which also owns dating apps like Match, OkCupid, and several others, has alleged that Google has monopolised the Play Store and is now abusing its power by requiring the dating app maker to use Google’s billing system.
“This lawsuit is a measure of last resort,” Match Group CEO Shar Dubey said in a statement. “We tried, in good faith, to resolve these concerns with Google, but their insistence and threats to remove our brands’ apps from the Google Play Store by June 1 has left us no choice but to take legal action.”
Google, which charges a fee of 15% on all subscriptions and up to 30% on all other in-app purchases, would “amount to hundreds of millions of dollars in inflated fees,” Tinder owner said, adding that the search giant’s requirement will eliminate user choice on its apps and increase costs to consumers.
Besides, the dating app maker claims Google Play billing is inferior, lacking capabilities its payment systems currently offer.
“They want access to Google Play’s global distribution platform and users, they want to unfairly leverage Google’s substantial investments in the platform, and they want it all for free,” Wilson White, VP, Government Affairs & Public Policy at Google said in a blog post, in response to Match Group’s claims against Google Play.
Both Google and its rival Apple control their mobile app stores and have been under the scanner for collecting a 15% to 30% service fee for in-app purchases. Last year, Google announced the reduction of the service fee in its app store by half to 15%, amid mounting pressure from regulators.
Google has also been sued by a coalition of 37 state Attorneys General over Android’s in-app payment monopoly, and there have been investigations by the U.S. House and Senate, the European Commission, and government entities in India, France, Germany, Japan, the U.K., Australia, and South Africa, with some litigation resulting in billions of dollars in fines.
The Google Play Store, which has a consumer base of over 2.5 billion 30-day active users in 190 countries, is a major mobile app distribution channel on smart devices running Android OS. Over 90% of all downloads of Android apps occur through the Play Store, the dating app maker noted.
“They [Google] control app distribution on Android devices, and pretend that developers could successfully reach consumers on Android elsewhere. It’s like saying ‘you don’t have to take the elevator to get to the 60th floor of a building, you can always scale the outside wall’,” Dubey said.
