Antitrust fights expand

A Portuguese app store sued Google in San Francisco on April 14, saying Google illegally locked up Android app distribution and billing. (usnews.com) Aptoide said Google’s rules and technical barriers kept smaller Android stores from reaching users at scale, even though Android allows software to be installed outside Google Play. The complaint seeks an injunction and triple damages under United States antitrust law. (usnews.com) A day later, the European Commission told Meta that charging rival artificial intelligence assistants for access to WhatsApp would still breach European Union competition rules. The regulator said it may impose interim measures ordering Meta to reverse the change while the case continues. (reuters.com) The Meta case turns on a simple gatekeeper question: whether the owner of a giant messaging network can set access terms that make it too costly for rivals to compete inside that network. The Commission opened the investigation in December 2025 after Meta changed WhatsApp terms for outside artificial intelligence providers. (ec.europa.eu) The Google suit asks a similar question in a different layer of the stack: whether control of the default app store and payment rails on Android lets Google choke off rival stores before users ever see them. Aptoide called itself the world’s third-largest Android app store and said Google’s conduct blunted price and policy pressure from competitors. (usnews.com) These cases land after years of antitrust fights aimed at the biggest platforms’ core products, including search, app stores and social media. Regulators are now drilling into the terms for access to the infrastructure those platforms control, from billing systems to messaging interfaces. (politico.eu) Google did not immediately respond to Reuters on the Aptoide lawsuit. Meta said on April 15 that it disagreed with the Commission’s preliminary view and that charging rivals for access was a proportionate response to the regulator’s concerns. (usnews.com) (france24.com) Google is already under a United States court order to open parts of Android distribution after Epic Games won a jury verdict in 2023, and Google agreed in November 2025 to changes to settle that case. Aptoide filed its own European complaint against Google in 2014, showing how long these disputes over mobile distribution have been building. (usnews.com) The European Commission said its WhatsApp probe now covers the full European Economic Area, including Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, after earlier being centered outside Italy because Italy had opened a separate national case. The next fight in both matters is likely to be over remedies, not just whether the platforms are dominant. (france24.com)