Slashdot: Google Accused By Developer of Retaliation For Cooperating With House Antitrust Investigation

Google Accused By Developer of Retaliation For Cooperating With House Antitrust Investigation
Published on August 01, 2020 at 07:10AM
Google kicked an email app off its Play Store Friday, just days after its developers revealed they were cooperating with House lawmakers who questioned the tech giants' chief executives during a landmark tech antitrust hearing earlier this week. From a report: The founders of Blix, the maker of the "BlueMail" app, say they believe the move was retaliation for their outspokenness on antitrust issues. They said Google had not previously warned them about the move. "We have been developing for the Google Play Store for more than six years, but we woke up this morning to find ourselves kicked out with no notice," Blix co-founder Ben Volach said in an interview Friday. On Wednesday, the antitrust subcommittee of the House Judiciary committee questioned the CEOs of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google about new evidence the committee has gathered in an ongoing investigation into allegedly anticompetitive behavior by the four companies. One area of interest for the committee was the power of Apple and Google to act as gatekeepers for app developers, particularly when they compete head-to-head with those developers.

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