What is Hug, a project that Google was secretly working on?

Epic Games is filing lawsuits around the world alleging that Google and Apple’s app distribution platforms violated antitrust laws. However, on August 19, 2021, it was revealed that Google was developing a project to maintain its monopoly position on the Play Store when Epic Games released an uncensored version of the collection in a court of law held in California, USA.

In the minor revision of the complaint against Google released by Epic Games, in order to prevent app developers from using app distribution platforms other than the Play Store, Google would provide funds to app developers and exclude smartphone manufacturers from app distribution platforms other than the Play Store. It turned out that countermeasures were being implemented, such as demanding

In the public complaint, a series of countermeasures on Google’s side are called Project Hug, and major app developers, including Activision Blizzard, which distributes popular game apps such as Call of Duty Mobile, were agreeing to the Project Hug contract. are recording At the same time, it is also revealed that Epic Games received a YouTube sponsorship contract and offer to offer cloud services at a discount price if Google released Fortnite on the Google Store and agreed to pay a 30% fee.

Epic Games also said in a 2019 Google internal document that if Epic Games approves its own app distribution method, it will incur a loss of up to $1.4 billion by 2022, and that if Amazon or Samsung Electronics follow Epic Games’ move, a loss of $6 billion may eventually occur. claimed to have been mentioned.

In addition, in order to prevent mobile phone operators from expanding their own Android app distribution platform, since 2009, mobile phone operators pay 20-25% of the 30% fee for various mobile operators and Play Store, and Google pays 5-10%. that a contract was signed to take In the lawsuit, Epic Games points out that Google was aware of incentivizing mobile phone operators to earn high commissions and outweighing the lost opportunity of not being able to build their own platform in return.

Also, Google is aware that only 4.4% of Android apps were downloaded from outside the Play Store between June and September 2016, and Google’s internal documents in 2017 state that the Play Store dominates in all countries including the United States. Epic Games claims that Google was aware of the store’s monopoly status in this regard. Related information can be found here.