(Reuters) – Dating app maker Match Group Inc. sued Alphabet Inc.’s Google on Monday, calling the move a “last resort” to prevent Tinder and its other apps from launching from the Play Store for refusing to share up to 30% of their sales .
Match’s lawsuit follows ongoing cases brought by “Fortnite” maker Epic Games, dozens of U.S. prosecutors and others to target Google’s alleged anti-competitive behavior with the Play Store.
Google said that Match tried to avoid paying for the significant value it receives.
“Like all companies, we charge for our services, and like all responsible platforms, we protect users from fraud,”
; said Google. It has said that its payment tool helps to deter fraud.Match’s lawsuit, filed in federal court in California, accuses Google of violating federal and state antitrust laws and seeks to prevent such conduct.
This is remarkable because some of Match’s apps have been exempt from Google’s policies for about the past decade. Now Google says it will block downloads of these apps by June 1 if they do not only offer their payment system and share revenue, the lawsuit states.
“This trial is a measure of last resort,” said Match Chief Executive Shar Dubey. “We tried, in good faith, to solve these problems with Google, but their stubbornness and threats have left us no choice.”
At stake for Match is what it describes as hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue that would have to be paid to Google.
The majority of users of Match’s most popular app, Tinder, prefer its payment system, which enables installment plans, bank transfers and other features not provided by Google, according to the lawsuit.
Google said that developers can bypass the Play Store and that they have reduced fees and created other programs to solve problems.
Dubey said it was not profitable to go around Play.
“It’s like saying, ‘you do not have to take the elevator to get to the 60th floor of a building, you can always scale the outer wall,'” she said.
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