Search "app store" and Only Get Walmart? Judge Catches Google Playing Dumb

Search "store for apps" on Google's Play Store, and what pops up isn't app stores at all—it's brick-and-mortar retailers like Walmart. This is the exact demo Epic's lawyers walked the judge through in court, and it's the most glaring detail in the entire case.

U.S. District Judge James Donato, who is presiding over the Google-Epic antitrust case and overseeing the follow-up remedies, has now determined that Google added "unnecessary anticompetitive friction" to the download process for third-party app stores within Play Store, and gave the company one week to fix it. According to The Verge, Donato pointed out that even when users do manage to find third-party stores, they don't show up in the normal search results list—they get buried under a separate banner instead. His exact words: "This is not acceptable, and it needs to be fixed. I want every possible phrasing covered, even ones that are only 70% accurate."

Another issue singled out involves Aptoide, currently the only third-party store listed on Play Store. The "install" button users expect to see has been swapped out for "view" instead. Donato argued that this extra layer of menu clicking essentially discourages people from downloading. Facing these accusations, Google ultimately agreed to make adjustments within a week.

Google's announcement in March 2026 that it would support third-party app stores was one outcome of its settlement with Epic reached in late 2025, and also a revised version of the remedy Donato had proposed back in 2024—when the court had already ruled that Google held a monopoly in the app distribution market. This latest ruling essentially calls out the obvious: Google's first attempt at loosening its grip simply didn't go far enough.