Google faces legal and product pressure

Google is facing two fresh tests at once: a new United States antitrust suit over Android app stores and new scrutiny over errors in its artificial intelligence search summaries. (usnews.com) (newsweek.com) On Tuesday, April 14, Aptoide sued Google in federal court in San Francisco, accusing it of monopolizing Android app distribution and billing. Aptoide, a Portuguese company focused on mobile games, said Google’s control shut out smaller rivals and limited price competition. (usnews.com) (srnnews.com) Aptoide said it is the world’s third-largest Android app store and asked for an injunction plus triple damages under United States antitrust law. Google, which is owned by Alphabet, did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment in the April 14 report. (usnews.com) (asiannewsindia.com) The case lands as Google is already fighting antitrust pressure on several fronts. The United States Department of Justice said in January 2025 that it backed Epic Games in its app store case against Google, and in separate cases judges have ruled that Google illegally monopolized parts of search and digital advertising. (justice.gov 1) (justice.gov 2) (justice.gov 3) At the same time, Google’s search product is under renewed quality scrutiny. Newsweek reported on April 14 that a study by artificial intelligence startup Oumi, commissioned by The New York Times, found Google’s AI Overviews were accurate on 91 percent of tested queries. (newsweek.com) (pcmag.com) Because Google handles more than 5 trillion searches a year, that error rate would still translate into tens of millions of wrong answers and hundreds of thousands of inaccuracies each minute if applied broadly. Google disputed that framing and said the benchmark did not reflect how people actually use Search. (newsweek.com) (newsminimalist.com) AI Overviews are the machine-written summaries that appear above regular web links in some Google results. Google said in March 2025 that the feature was used by more than 1 billion people, and in February 2026 it made Gemini 3 the default model for AI Overviews globally. (blog.google 1) (blog.google 2) Google has said people are “happier with their results” and search more often when they use AI Overviews. The company also said in 2024 that it made technical updates after early answers produced false or odd results, including changes to triggering, content policies, and ranking systems. (blog.google 1) (blog.google 2) The two problems hit different parts of Google’s business, but both turn on control over how people reach information. One fight is about who gets to distribute apps and process payments on Android; the other is about whether Google’s own answer box can be trusted when it sits above the open web. (usnews.com) (newsweek.com)