Google loses Epic Games case: What happens next?

Google (GOOG, GOOGL) lost an antitrust case brought by Epic Games, with a jury finding that the company engaged in anticompetitive conduct with its Play Store. Adam Kovacevich, Chamber of Progress Founder and CEO, joins Yahoo Finance Live to take a closer look at the trial and what makes it different from the one Apple (AAPL) won.

Google is set to appeal the ruling with the Ninth Circuit, the same court that decided for Apple in Epic Games' suit against the tech giant. Kovacevich says that the court will have to "grapple with how these two cases could come to different outcomes."

Watch the video above to hear what Kovacevich says about what Google's options are now that the jury has made its decision.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.

Video transcript

JULIE HYMAN: What happens now if Google does appeal as it's expected to? Then what if this comes before a different judge?

ADAM KOVACEVICH: Yeah. Great question. So the first step before an appeal will likely be the remedies phase. And so early next year, the same judge will have to determine, given that the jury has found Google guilty, what are appropriate remedies? The judge has already said he is not going to try to micromanage the commission fee that Google charges to app developers.

And so for example, whether or not Epic pays 30% or 29% or 15%, that's not going to be a subject that he's going to decide. But what we may see instead are policy changes. So changes to the rules of how Google runs the Google Play Store and particularly around in-app billing. One of the things that Google has been rolling out as a pilot program over the last year is alternative in-app billing besides Google Play.

So a developer could allow other forms of billing besides Google Play's billing. I think it's very likely that we could see a remedy in this case look something like that. Provide Epic and perhaps other gaming services with these basically user choice billing options besides Google Play billing.

- And Adam, I'm also interested to get your take. What was the difference between this case and the Apple Epic case, in which they're Epic mostly lost?

ADAM KOVACEVICH: Yeah. Well, I think the biggest difference is that this was a jury trial and the last one was a judge trial. So at the end of that trial, we had 50-page opinion from a judge. At the end of this trial, we have a eight-page questionnaire that the jury filled out. And so we don't know much about the jury's reasoning. We didn't have-- they didn't have to grapple with a lot of those questions.

I do think there are differences between the Apple model, which is a more of a closed ecosystem, and the Android ecosystem, which is more of an open one. And some of those, I think, might have played into the jury's-- into the jury's analysis here. But it's important to say that if Google appeals this decision, it appeals it to the Ninth Circuit, which is the same judge that affirmed Apple's win against Epic in its case.

And I think you may see that it's-- the Ninth Circuit has to grapple with how these two cases could come to different outcomes. And particularly, this question of whether iOS and Android truly compete with each other, because in the Epic case, the jury found that Android does not compete with iOS. But in the Apple case, the judge found that Apple does compete with Android. And so they're going to have to potentially grapple with that on appeal.