His portrayal came in testimony in an antitrust trial focused on Epic Games’ attempt to upend Google’s store for Android phone apps.
Sweeney’s more than two-hour stint on the witness stand in San Francisco came less than a week after Google CEO Sundar Pichai defended before the 10-member jury the way his company runs its Play Store for Android apps. It’s one of two antitrust cases against Google, whose tech empire valued at $1.7 trillion is being threatened by legal attacks seeking to break it up.
Testimony in the Android phone app case is scheduled to finish before Christmas.
The other case, focused on Google’s dominant search engine, ended last week, but won’t be decided by a federal judge in Washington, D.C., until next year.
While Sweeney sought to depict Google as a greedy monopolist under questioning by his own lawyer, Google attorney Jonathan Kravis tried to flip the script. Much of Kravis’ his cross-examination appeared design to cast Sweeney as an executive primarily interested in bypassing a long-standing commission system to boost his video game company’s profits.
Epic, the maker of the popular Fortnite game, alleges that Google has been engaged in illegal price-gouging by collecting commissions ranging from 15% to 30% on in-app digital transactions. It’s similar to a payment system that Epic unsuccessfully challenged in a parallel lawsuit filed against Apple’s iPhone app store. Epic is appealing the outcome of the Apple trial to the U.S. Supreme Court.
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