It is Tuesday, December 19th.

Welcome to the Tech Check podcast.

I am Mark Gilbert.

Deirdre is off.

Today, we got the news.

Google has agreed to a massive antitrust settlement paying $700 million and making several other concessions to its play store or its app store in a lawsuit that it had been stifling competition in its Android

eer ecosystem here is

cembe see Steve Kovac wrapping up that news

Google may owe you a couple bucks after settling an antitrust case last night with a group of

state attorneys general. Google agreed to pay 700 million dollars with most of that

going to Android customers to settle the case brought against policies in its app store.

Google will also make changes to its payment system and more as part of the settlement.

Now that includes allowing apps to offer alternative payment methods instead of going through

Google, but Google's still going to collect a hefty fee from those, just 4% less than it already

charges.

It will also have to make it easier to download apps directly from the

internet instead of through the App Store. Now that will happen on one step

instead of two steps as you can see pictured here and all of those changes are only for U.S. customers

this is part of an emerging trend with these legal cases against Apple and

Google's App Stores in recent years they're fighting country by country to

protect their high- margin app store models.

Also, the settlement comes after Google lost its antitrust case

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