Google's app store fight has come down to a search box and a button

One month after Epic Games and Google seemed to have stopped fighting over the future of Android app distribution, the two were back in a San Francisco courtroom. Judge James Donato ordered Google to remove what he called "anticompetitive friction" from the path to rival app stores, according to The Verge's account of the proceedings.

Epic's lawyer Yonatan Even opened with a live demo. He typed "store for apps" into the Play Store and got no third-party app stores in the results, only physical retailers. "Wait, why did Walmart come up?" Donato asked. "That's not good."

"That is not acceptable, that has to be fixed," the judge said. "I want every possible variation that's even only 70 percent properly phrased." Google's counsel agreed to make it happen.

The moment was the case in miniature. Google controls both the store and the search box that leads to it, and Donato treated search results as part of the monopoly remedy, not a cosmetic detail.

The view button, the search box, and the interstitial

Donato targeted three frictions. The first is the install flow: users who pick a third-party app store must press "view" before they can press "install." "You don't get that when you're looking at Apple Music," the judge noted. "Make that install, not view."

The second is search. Epic showed that typing "app store," or even the name of Aptoide, the first rival store to make it into Google Play, surfaces a banner that routes users to a dedicated third-party page instead of a normal list of apps. Even argued the problem isn't limited to brand-new stores: established companies like Amazon might decide against launching app stores if they would lose the ability to appear in normal search results. Donato ordered that fixed too. "Why doesn't it say 'are you looking for music' when you type in 'music store'?" he asked.

The third is the "are you looking for" screen, an interstitial asking users to confirm they really want an app store before the install proceeds. Google's attorney said the two companies had agreed that app stores are a special category of apps with advanced permissions. Donato answered that the warning on the third-party store's page is sufficient, and that there is no need to ask users whether they want what they searched for, "whether it's a game store or a glass of water." Then he was blunt: "Take off the 'are you looking for' screen, there's no purpose for that. There's a friction there that has no purpose whatsoever."

Remedies that live in the interface

The hearing is part of a remedy process set in motion almost two years ago, when Donato ordered Google to carry rival Android app stores inside its own Play Store and give rivals complete access to its full catalog for several years. This week's orders enforce that structure. Nearly three years have passed since a jury unanimously decided Google held an illegal monopoly over Android apps, and closing the gap between the ruling and the actual experience of installing a rival store has been the fight ever since.

That is why button labels and search results matter. A "view" click instead of an "install" click, or an app store query that returns shopping results, changes whether a competing store can reach users at all. Donato saw it the same way. "We all know that when you go to a Google store or an Apple store and you type in the name of your app, you're going to get one thing you were looking for and ten things you don't want," he said, adding that he does not think average users will be confused when they get what they asked for.

One week to comply

Donato wants the changes fast. "Have it done by a week from today," he told Google, and left the door open for pushback: "If there's some problem with that, let me know."

Google's counsel agreed to the specific fixes during the hearing. The open question is whether a week is enough to rework search behavior, an install flow, and a confirmation screen across the Play Store, or whether the next hearing will be about the next layer of friction. For rivals waiting on a fair shot at Android users, the answer will show up where users will see it first: in the search box.