Pine Labs gets Singapore court approval to shift base to India | TechCrunch
A Singapore High Court has effectively approved Pine Labs’ request to shift its operations to India.
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A Singapore High Court has effectively approved Pine Labs’ request to shift its operations to India.
© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
In a new filing, Google is pushing back against Fortnite maker Epic Games’ numerous proposed remedies after a court determined Google engaged in anticompetitive practices on its Play Store. Following the jury’s decision late last year, the two sides pled their cases about how Google should have to change its behavior in light of the ruling. For its part, Epic Games issued a wild laundry list of demands, that included it gaining access to the Play Store catalog of app and game titles for six years, the ability to distribute its own app store on Google Play with no fees, and much more. It also wanted to put an end to all agreements, incentives and deals, as well as penalties that would allow the Play Store or Google Play Billing to gain the upper hand against rivals.
The tech giant’s surprising and swift defeat was a historic ruling, especially since Epic Games largely lost a similar antitrust case with Apple, which had not been tried by jury. In the Epic-Apple lawsuit, the court decided Apple was not a monopolist, but did agree that developers should be able to steer their customers to alternative means to pay via the web. The case was appealed up to the Supreme Court, which declined to hear it, allowing the lower court’s ruling to stand.
While the jury in Google’s case was convinced that the tech giant leveraged its market power in illegal ways, it didn’t get to decide the next steps — that’s up to the judge. The new filing, along with Epic’s proposal, will help to inform Judge James Donato in a hearing scheduled on May 23 about what actions to take next to put Google’s power in check.
Epic Games in April had detailed its demands in a proposed injunction, found here. At a high level, Epic wants Google to allow users to download apps from any app store or the web, depending on their preference. It doesn’t want Google to be able to block or coerce OEMs or carriers to favor Google Play. And it doesn’t want Google to be able to impose additional fees for routing around the Play Store, which Epic Games believes is also an anticompetitive practice.
The Fortnite maker additionally asked the court to enforce other changes, including giving Epic access to the Play Store catalog so it can perform users’ app updates, without warning screens or extra fees. Plus, Epic wants developers to be able to tell its users how to pay for their apps and services elsewhere, and how much they could save by doing so. It wants to eliminate the requirement to use Google’s “User Choice Billing,” which offers only a small discount to developers who process payment transactions themselves, and much more.
Google, of course, disagrees about how the court should proceed.
In a statement, Google Vice President of Government Affairs & Public Policy Wilson White referred to Epic’s demands as overreaching and unnecessary.
“Epic’s demands would harm the privacy, security, and overall experience of consumers, developers, and device manufacturers,” he said. “Not only does their proposal go far beyond the scope of the recent U.S. trial verdict — which we will be challenging — it’s also unnecessary due to the settlement we reached last year with state attorneys general from every state and multiple territories. We will continue to vigorously defend our right to a sustainable business model that enables us to keep people safe, partner with developers to innovate and grow their businesses, and maintain a thriving Android ecosystem for everyone.”
In the injunction filed Thursday in a U.S. District Court in California, Google argues that Epic’s demands put users’ security and privacy at risk as it would remove its ability to implement trust and safety measures about the use of the third-party app stores. (Apple has used a similar strategy to fight against regulations around opening up its App Store to competition, too, saying it’s responsible for users’ privacy and security.)
Plus, Google says that it would be required to tell all third-party app stores, without user consent, which apps a user has installed. This would expose personal apps’ usage, including around sensitive areas like religion, politics or health, without rules about how that data could be used.
The company also said that Epic is asking it to remove safeguards around sideloading apps.
And in case those arguments fail, in another tactic, Google points out that the remedies Epic proposed are not needed because it already settled with state attorneys general to no longer sign wide-ranging exclusivity agreements with developers. Epic’s proposal would additionally prevent Google from working with developers to provide exclusive content through Play Store apps, which it says is an important opportunity for developers.
Finally, the state AG settlement would allow any app store to compete for placement on Android devices, Google said, but Epic’s proposal would cut it out of that process, reducing competition. Without Google involved, rival app stores would underbid, impacting OEM margins, it said.
The judge’s coming decision over the remedy in this case will be an interesting one to watch as it will set the stage for how app stores deemed monopolists will have to make concessions to allow more competition. Though Epic lost its fight with Apple, the Justice Department’s case against the iPhone maker is still underway as is its lawsuit with Google over its alleged search monopoly. The outcome of these cases will determine to what extent tech giants’ power will continue to remain unchecked, given the glaring lack of legislation in the U.S. to reign in the tech monopolies.
The Federal Trade Commission voted 3-2 this week to ban noncompete agreements. While the FTC estimates that nearly one in five American workers is subject to a noncompete, these agreements haven’t been a huge issue in Silicon Valley, because they’re not enforceable in California.
This has arguably been one of the region’s competitive advantages, as it allows employees to start something new without worrying (in most cases) that they’ll have to spend the next few years battling their old employer in court.
With this ban, the FTC could give employees across the United States that same freedom. In fact, the commission claims this will lead to the creation of 8,500 new startups annually, as well as 17,000 to 29,000 additional patents in an average year.
Some caveats: This rule only applies to noncompetes, not non-disclosure agreements, so former employees can still get into legal hot water if their old company accuses them of spilling trade secrets. And while the FTC says most existing noncompetes will no longer be enforceable, existing noncompetes for senior executives will still hold.
Most significantly, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says it will sue the FTC over the rule, arguing that the commission doesn’t have the legal authority to issue this kind of regulation.
Hit play, then let me know what you think! (And if you’re pining for your Alex Wilhelm, fear not: He’ll be back hosting the TechCrunch Minute next week.)
Byju’s secured favorable outcomes in two court hearings Thursday, paving the way for the embattled edtech startup to move ahead with the extraordinary general meeting scheduled for Friday.
On Thursday, the National Company Law Tribunal refused to defer Byju’s planned EGM, where the Indian startup seeks to increase the authorized share capital to give effect to the $200 million rights issue. The matter will be heard again on April 4, the company court said. A lawyer representing the estranged four investors of Byju’s pointed out that once the authorized share capital has been increased, it cannot be reversed.
A group of Byju’s investors, including Prosus, Peak XV and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and Sofina, is legally challenging Byju’s recent fully subscribed rights issue and seeks to remove the founder and chief executive Byju Raveendran from the firm.
The Karnataka High Court separately said Thursday it will only hear the case where the investor group seeks to remove Raveendran after two months.
The rights issue is crucial for Byju’s, once India’s most valuable startup, as it seeks to tap the $200 million it has already received from a set of investors, including Raveendran. In an interim order last month, the tribunal court directed Byju’s to move the funds into an escrow account and not use it until the issues have been resolved.
People close to Byju’s assert that the estranged investors are trying to delay the rights issue to completely starve the edtech group. The investor group had no comment.
Byju’s and some of its investors have been fighting for nearly a year over what the shareholders allege are operational and governance challenges at the Indian firm. The startup was in the final stages to raise about $1 billion last year, but the talks derailed after the auditor Deloitte and three key board members (representatives of Prosus, Peak XV and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative) abruptly quit the startup. Instead, Byju’s ended up raising less than $150 million in debt from Davidson Kempner and had to repay the investor the full committed amount after making a technical default in a separate $1.2 billion term loan B.
As the funds dried up, Byju’s scrambled to launch a rights issue that cut its valuation by 99%. Prosus, Peak XV, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and Sofina as well as some other investors refused to participate in the rights issue. Instead, they voted to remove Raveendran and his family from the startup last month. Raveendran told employees later that he was still their chief executive and that rumors of his firing had been “greatly exaggerated.”
Raveendran claimed in the letter that the extraordinary general meeting lacked the minimum quorum and failed to win majority support for proposed resolutions. The meeting also violated several other “essential” local rules, he asserted.
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