U.S. judge orders sweeping changes to Google’s Android app store

A federal judge on Monday ordered Google to pry open its Android app store to competition, continuing a wave of challenges to the power of Google and other American technology giants.

U.S. District Judge James Donato largely sided with Epic Games, creator of the Fortnite video games, which won a jury verdict last year that found the Google Play app store operated as an illegal monopoly.

As punishment, Epic had asked Donato to mandate unprecedented changes that would let businesses largely bypass Google’s app store to distribute their Android apps and collect customers’ digital purchases from apps. Donato’s order on Monday granted some but not all of the changes that Epic asked for.

The injunction issued by Donato will require Google to make several changes that the Mountain View, Calif., company had been resisting, including a provision that will require its Play Store for Android apps to distribute rival third-party app stores so consumers can download them to their phones if they so desire.

The judge’s order will also make the millions of Android apps in the Play Store library accessible to rivals, allowing them to offer up a competitive selection.

Donato is giving Google until November to make the revisions dictated in his order. The company had insisted it would take 12 to 16 months to design the safeguards needed to reduce the chances of potentially malicious software making its way into rival Android app stores and infecting millions of Samsung phones and other mobile devices running on its free Android software.

The court-mandated overhaul is meant to prevent Google from walling off competition in the Android app market as part of an effort to protect a commission system that has been a boon for one of the world’s most prosperous companies and helped elevate the market value of its corporate parent Alphabet Inc. to $2 trillion.

Google said in a blog post that it will ask the court to pause the pending changes, and will appeal the court’s decision.

It’s not clear yet how Donato’s order will be implemented or whether it will survive Google’s expected appeal. But the judge’s decision has the potential to transform Android phones into the world’s leading laboratory for how technology might change if it were less controlled by Silicon Valley titans.

Donato’s order is among the legal and regulatory changes around the world that are chipping away at 15 years of smartphone app control by Google and Apple. Together, these challenges could spark a boom of fresh ideas in apps, through which people make an estimated $170 billion in yearly purchases, and drain profitable income from Google and Apple.

For Google, Donato’s legal order is also the latest antitrust hit that could reshape the company.

Another federal judge recently ruled that Google’s lucrative web search business broke antimonopoly laws. The judge has said he intends to decide by next summer on consequences, which could include a breakup of Google.

The company has said it will appeal that decision.

Google is also fighting another antitrust lawsuit led by government officials that accuses the company of squashing competition in online advertising.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.