At 6 PM Pacific Time on Tuesday, Google, approximately three dozen state attorneys-general, and consumer class-action lawyers filed a "stipulation and [proposed] order re deadlines in consumers' and states' actions in light of tentative settlement" in connection with the Google Play (Android app store) antitrust litigation in the Northern District of California that resulted from the procedural consolidation of multiple parallel actions. The settlement was reached the same day and is subject to certain approvals (by the state attorneys-general, which should be a formality unless there was more political resistance than I can imagine, and Google parent Alphabet's board of directors, which should be even more of a formality), after which it needs to be blessed by the court, which is also unlikely to pose a major hurdle. The plan is for a long-form settlement agreement to be submitted to Judge James Donato in about a month.
The terms have not been announced yet, not even in broad lines.
The United States District Court for the Northern District of California will hold a trial starting November 6. With the states and the consumer plaintiffs out (and developer class actions--which achieved nothing of major value to the developer community at large--having settled long before), this means that there will be only two plaintiffs: Epic Games, which brought the complaint in August 2020 after Google ejected Fortnite from the Google Play Store, and Match Group (Tinder).
First, the notice of a tentative settlement (this post continues below the document):
It is not surprising that the class-action lawyers would settle with Google: in the end they just want to get paid. The far bigger win for Google here is that the three dozen U.S. states are also prepared to drop the case. Governmental support would have been very useful for Epic and Match at the trial. A settlement with only the class-action lawyers would have been of little value to Google if the state AGs had continued to sue on behalf of their citizens. The consumer class might not even have been certified in the end.
Given the fundamental problems surrounding app distribution on Android, it is hard to imagine that the settlement will solve the most pressing problems. But we will know for sure only when the exact terms have been announced. It's unlikely but not impossible that the state AGs negotiated something of value.
The only advantage this development has for Epic and Match is that the trial will be streamlined. The trial structure was threatening to become very complex, and now the focus at the pretrial conference on Tuesday will be on how to proceed with an Epic & Match v. Google trial. I don't think a trial that will be interrupted by the Thanksgiving holiday is a good idea, but it probably won't be postponed in light of the impending settlement.
Epic and Match may still government support: the DOJ, which supported and may continue to support (at the certiorari stage) Epic's appeal of the decision in the parallel Apple case, could file amicus briefs later on.
On Tuesday morning by Pacific Time, all the parties filed a joint pretrial statement highlighting the differences between their positions. There was no mention of a settlement in that filing: it was totally adversarial. But a settlement was mentioned as a hypothetical possibility in footnote 4:
"Further, while all Plaintiff groups expect to be at trial with the experts they disclosed to Google, there are circumstances that, at least theoretically, could change these plans (e.g., a settlement, a pending Daubert motion, etc.).
Here's that document:
