Character actors from the Epic Games Fortnite video game dance during the E3 Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles on June 12, 2019.
Kyle Grillot | Bloomberg | Getty Images
A U.S. judge issued a permanent injunction on Monday that will force Google to offer alternatives to its Google Play store for downloading apps on Android phones.
Google will also be restricted from paying fees or sharing revenue with companies in exchange for them choosing not to compete with Google’s app store. Alphabet stock took a leg lower on the news and was down more than 2% Monday.
The ruling from Judge James Donato in California is the most significant outcome of Epic Games’ antitrust lawsuit against Google, which kicked off in 2020. The Fortnite maker accused Google of anti-competitive practices, including paying hardware companies and Android phone makers to not develop competing app stores.
The decision could lead to developers getting a bigger share of the market, as both Google and Apple’s app stores typically take between 15% and 30% of total sales for high-grossing apps. The new restrictions on Google Play may allow developers to keep more revenue by bypassing Google’s rules or fees.
According to the filing, starting in November, for three years, Google will not be able to:
Pay companies to launch apps exclusively or first on Google Play
Pay companies so they do not compete with Google Play
Pay companies to preinstall Google Play on new devices
Require app makers to use Google Play Billing, or prohibit app makers from telling their users about cheaper online goods on their website (Google Play takes between 15% and 30% of in-app purchases as a fee from large app makers)
Google will also have to permit competing Android app stores to access Google Play’s catalog of apps
Google will have to carry third-party Android app stores on its Google Play app store.
Epic Games and Google will also form a three-person committee that will review technical issues related to Google’s compliance, according to the filing.
Epic Games publishes titles such as Fortnite, which are monetized through in-app purchases of character costumes and other so-called “skins,” and challenged Google and Apple’s contractual control of mobile app distribution in 2020 offering less-expensive purchases of Fortnite’s in-game currency, violating app store rules and kicking off the lawsuits.
Epic Games prevailed over Google late last year, and Monday’s filing details the changes Google has to make. Epic Games mostly lost in a very similar suit against Apple and its control of the App Store. Google’s trial was decided by a jury. Apple’s trial was decided by a judge.
During the Google trial, Epic Games focused on whether Google locked up the app store market through deals with handset makers, and whether it scared users away from using Android’s sideloading functionality, which allows Android users to install apps from the web, through security warnings.
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney previously said Google’s corporate culture contributed to Epic’s win because Google officials often wrote down or documented business practices in emails or communications that came out during the trial.
Google said in a blog post that it will ask the court to pause the pending changes, and will appeal the court’s decision.
An Epic Games representative did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang attends a roundtable discussion at the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris on June 11, 2025.
Sarah Meyssonnier | Reuters
Nvidia announced Tuesday that it hopes to resume sales of its H20 general processing units to clients in China, saying that the U.S. government had assured the company would be granted licenses.
Nvidia’s sales of the H20 chips, which had been designed specifically to keep them out of export controls on China, were halted in April.
“The U.S. government has assured NVIDIA that licenses will be granted, and NVIDIA hopes to start deliveries soon,” the company said in a statement.
This comes against the backdrop of a preliminary trade deal between Washington and Beijing last month that sought China to resume rare earth exports and the U.S. to relax tech export controls.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang in recent months has ramped up his lobbying against export controls, arguing that they inhibited American tech leadership. In May, Huang said chip restrictions had already cut Nvidia’s China market share nearly in half.
Huang also announced a new “fully compliant” GPU, NVIDIA RTX PRO, saying it was ideal for smart factories and logistics.
The potential change in U.S. stance follows a meeting between Huang and U.S. President Donald Trump last week.
In his meeting with Trump and U.S. policymakers, Huang had reaffirmed Nvidia’s support for the administration’s job creation and onshoring efforts, as well as the aim for America to lead in global AI, the company said.
Meanwhile, in Beijing, it was confirmed that Huang has met with government and industry officials to discuss the benefits of AI and ways for researchers to advance safe and secure AI for the benefit of all.
In this photo illustration, a man seen holding a smartphone with the logo of US artificial intelligence company Cognition AI Inc. in front of website.
Timon Schneider | SOPA Images | Sipa USA | AP
Artificial intelligence startup Cognition announced it’s acquiring Windsurf, the AI coding company that lost its CEO and several other senior employees to Google just days earlier.
Cognition said on Monday that it will purchase Windsurf’s intellectual property, product, trademark, brand and talent, but didn’t disclose terms of the deal. It’s the latest development in an AI talent war, as companies like Meta, Google and OpenAI fiercely compete for top engineers and researchers.
OpenAI had been in talks to acquire Windsurf for about $3 billion in April, but the deal fell apart, and Google said on Friday that it hired Windsurf’s co-founder and CEO Varun Mohan. Google is paying $2.4 billion in licensing fees and for compensation, as CNBC previously reported.
“Every new employee of Cognition will be treated the same way as existing employees: with transparency, fairness, and deep respect for their abilities and value,” Cognition CEO Scott Wu wrote in a memo to employees on Monday. “After today, our efforts will be as a united and aligned team. There’s only one boat and we’re all in it together.”
Cognition didn’t immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment. Windsurf directed CNBC to Cognition.
Cognition is best known for its AI coding agent named Devin, which is designed to help engineers build software faster. As of March, the startup had raised hundreds of millions of dollars at a valuation of close to $4 billion, according to a report from Bloomberg.
Both companies are backed by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund. Other investors in Windsurf include Greenoaks, Kleiner Perkins and General Catalyst.
“I’m overwhelmed with excitement and optimism, but most of all, gratitude,” Jeff Wang, the interim CEO of Windsurf, wrote in a post on X on Monday. “Trying times reveal character, and I couldn’t be prouder of how every single person at Windsurf showed up these last three days for each other and for our users.”
Wu said that the acquisition ensures all Windsurf employees are “treated with respect and well taken care of in this transaction.” All employees will participate financially in the deal, have vesting cliffs waived for their work to date and receive fully accelerated vesting for their, according to the memo.
“There’s never been a more exciting time to build,” Wu wrote.
The Grok logo is being displayed on a smartphone with Xai visible in the background in this photo illustration on April 1, 2024.
Jonathan Raa | Nurphoto | Getty Images
The European Union on Monday called in representatives from Elon Musk‘s xAI after the company’s social network X, and chatbot Grok, generated and spread anti-semitic hate speech, including praise for Adolf Hitler, last week.
A spokesperson for the European Commission told CNBC via e-mail that a technical meeting will take place on Tuesday.
xAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Sandro Gozi, a member of Italy’s parliament and member of the Renew Europe group, last week urged the Commission to hold a formal inquiry.
“The case raises serious concerns about compliance with the Digital Services Act (DSA) as well as the governance of generative AI in the Union’s digital space,” Gozi wrote.
X was already under a Commission probe for possible violations of the DSA.
Read more CNBC tech news
Grok also generated and spread offensive posts about political leaders in Poland and Turkey, including Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Turkish President Recep Erdogan.
Over the weekend, xAI posted a statement apologizing for the hateful content.
“First off, we deeply apologize for the horrific behavior that many experienced. … After careful investigation, we discovered the root cause was an update to a code path upstream of the @grok bot,” the company said in the statement.
Musk and his xAI team launched a new version of Grok Wednesday night amid the backlash. Musk called it “the smartest AI in the world.”
xAI works with other businesses run and largely owned by Musk, including Tesla, the publicly traded automaker, and SpaceX, the U.S. aerospace and defense contractor.
Despite Grok’s recent outburst of hate speech, the U.S. Department of Defense awarded xAI a $200 million contract to develop AI. Anthropic, Google and OpenAI also received AI contracts.