Google hit with fresh antitrust claims

Google is facing a new round of private antitrust attacks in the United States, led by a rival Android app store and a separate advertiser arbitration campaign. (usnews.com, claimsjournal.com) Aptoide, a Lisbon-based Android app marketplace, sued Google on April 14 in federal court in San Francisco, accusing it of monopolizing Android app distribution and in-app billing. Aptoide said Google’s control over Google Play and related services shuts out smaller stores and steers developers toward Google’s own system. (usnews.com) The company said it had about 436,000 apps in its catalog and more than 200 million annual users by 2024, and asked the court for an injunction plus unspecified treble damages. Reuters reported Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the new suit. (usnews.com) A separate fight is unfolding in advertising, where groups of advertisers are preparing mass arbitration claims tied to Google’s search and advertising technology businesses. Those claims follow court rulings in 2024 and 2025 that found Google held illegal monopolies in search and ad technology markets. (claimsjournal.com, justice.gov, justice.gov) Mass arbitration is a procedure that bundles at least 25 similar claims outside court, and the advertiser push appears aimed at getting around Google contract clauses that require arbitration. Lawyer Ashley Keller said he had already signed up a “significant number” of advertisers, and the first filings were expected this week. (claimsjournal.com) The Android case lands after Epic Games already won a major verdict against Google over the Play Store. A federal jury found in 2023 that Google illegally maintained monopoly power in Android app distribution and Android in-app billing, and the Ninth Circuit upheld that verdict and a permanent injunction on July 31, 2025. (cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov) That injunction bars Google from offering certain benefits to developers, device makers, carriers, or app distributors in exchange for favoring the Play Store. In a September 12, 2025 order, the Ninth Circuit denied Google’s request for a further stay and gave Google ten months from the mandate to comply with the catalog-access and app-store-distribution remedies. (cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov, cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov) Google is also still fighting the government’s search monopoly case. The Justice Department said on September 2, 2025 that a federal judge barred Google from maintaining exclusive distribution contracts for Google Search, Chrome, Google Assistant, and the Gemini application, and ordered data-sharing and syndication remedies short of forcing a sale of Android or Chrome. (justice.gov, usnews.com) In the advertiser matter, Google said in a recent corporate filing that it faces private damages claims tied to antitrust cases worldwide and that it could not estimate a possible loss. Keller, who is also representing Texas and other states in a separate ad-technology suit, estimated the search and display ad claims could exceed $218 billion. (claimsjournal.com) The immediate question is whether these private cases can turn earlier monopoly findings into payouts and operating changes. Aptoide is asking a judge to reopen Android app distribution, while advertisers are trying to convert antitrust rulings into money claims on a mass scale. (usnews.com, claimsjournal.com)