Google's App Store Rival Was So Hard to Find That a Judge Stepped In
A federal judge ordered Google on August 14, 2026 to make it easier for Android phone users to find and install alternative app stores through the Play Store, giving the company one week to make the changes.
An app store is the place where you download apps for your phone. Most Android users only know the Google Play Store, but other companies can make their own app stores too. The judge, James Donato, said Google had made it unnecessarily hard for people to find and install those rival stores.
The problem came to light during a demonstration by Epic Games' legal team. When they searched the Play Store for "store for apps," no app stores appeared at all. Instead, the results showed listings for physical shops like Walmart. The one rival app store listed in the Play Store, called Aptoide, was not shown in normal search results. It was hidden behind a separate banner that required extra taps to reach.
Judge Donato was blunt. "That is not acceptable, that has to be fixed," he said. "I want every possible variation that's even only 70 percent properly phrased" (Engadget).
Google had also replaced the normal "Install" button on Aptoide's listing with a "View" button, adding an extra step. Donato said this discouraged users from downloading it.
Google agreed to make changes and committed to doing so within a week.
This fight goes back to 2020, when Epic Games sued Google in a federal court in California (case number 3:20-cv-05671). A jury decided in 2023 that Google had a monopoly on app distribution. In October 2024, Judge Donato ordered Google to open Android to rival app stores, allow alternative payment methods for three years, and distribute competing app stores through the Play Store itself (Reuters). Google appealed and tried to pause that order (case number 24-6256).
Google and Epic settled near the end of 2025. As part of the deal, Google said in March 2026 that it would support rival app stores on Android starting July 22 (Courthouse News). Rival app stores started appearing in the Play Store in August 2026, but Aptoide was the only one available at the time (Ars Technica).
The broader context here is the gap between following the rules and actually making something usable. Google technically met the settlement by listing Aptoide in the Play Store. But the judge's complaints, from the missing search results to the swapped button, point to a design meant to make discovery hard without openly blocking it.
This is a tension we have seen before in antitrust cases. A court can order a company to open up, but the company still controls the details — where something shows up in search, what the button says, how many taps it takes to finish. Each of these choices can satisfy a legal requirement while quietly steering users back to Google's own store.
The irony of the "store for apps" search returning Walmart instead of actual app stores is hard to miss. Google runs the most powerful search technology in the world, yet it could not surface a single rival app store for a search that described one almost perfectly.
Google now has one week to close that gap.
