Fornite developer Epic Games is asking a federal appeals court to uphold a jury's finding that Google's Play Store policies violated antitrust law, and to leave in place a judge's injunction requiring the company to revamp its app marketplace.

“This case is a reckoning long overdue,” Epic says in papers filed late last week with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The company adds that the jury's finding was based on evidence of “Google’s years-long strategy to suppress competition among app stores and payment solutions in the Android ecosystem,” and that the injunction was crafted “to stop Google’s unlawful conduct and address its continuing adverse effects, while allowing Google to compete on the merits.”

Epic's new papers come in dispute that began in 2020, when the game developer brought antitrust suits against both Google and Apple. Epic did so soon after both Google and Apple removed Fortnite from their mobile app marketplaces for allegedly attempting to avoid paying commissions on in-app purchases. (Both Google and Apple charge a commission on purchases made in apps that have been downloaded from Google Play or the App store.)

Epic's suit against Apple went to trial in 2021, and largely resulted in a defeat for Epic. U.S. District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in the Northern District of California, who presided over the non-jury trial, ruled that Epic failed to prove the bulk of its claims. Rogers said in her ruling that Google and Apple compete to distribute apps.

Nearly two years later, Epic's suit against Google went to trial. In that matter, a jury found that Google created or maintained an illegal monopoly in two “markets” -- Android app distribution, and Android in-app billing. The jury also found that Google wrongly tied company's ability to distribute through the Play store to Google's payment system.

In October, U.S. District Court Judge James Donato in San Francisco, who presided over the Google trial, issued a sweeping injunction that requires Google Play to host other companies' app stores, and give those companies access to Google's library of apps. The injunction -- which Donato said should last for three years -- also prohibits Google from forcing developers to use its billing system for Play Store apps, among other provisions.

The injunction is currently stayed.

Google recently urged the 9th Circuit to reverse jury's verdict and to permanently vacate the injunction.

Among other arguments, Google says the verdict is inconsistent with Rogers' ruling in Epic's suit against Apple, elaborating that Rogers' ruling should have precluded Epic from pursuing a “litigation do-over.”

Epic counters in its new papers that business differences between Google and Apple justify the different results at trial.

“Whereas Apple has vertically integrated its hardware, operating system and app store, Google publicly touts Android as an 'open alternative' ...but then uses an array of restrictive contracts to obstruct competition,” Epic writes.

“It is not 'inconsistent' for each company’s different conduct to be assessed individually, based on different trial records, leading to different results,” Epic adds.

The game developer is also asking the court to allow the injunction to immediately take effect.

“Violating the law has consequences,” Epic writes.“Courts have broad discretion to craft injunctions that address the ongoing adverse effects of a defendant’s anticompetitive conduct, and many courts have required antitrust violators to transact with others in specified ways.

Predictions are forecasts for what could happen in the future rather than definitive strategies. Advertisers and marketers, with help from very sophisticated technology and artificial intelligence, spend a lot of time digging through numbers to predict audiences that will purchase their clients’ products whether online or in stores, and forecast the need.

AI will play a major role in advertising and marketing in 2025. Brendon Kraham, vice president of global search ads and commerce for business and product strategy, shared with MediaPost the highlights of what his team will work on and how it will accomplish the tasks. 

Kraham, an outdoor aficionado who believes curiosity has driven Google's success for the past 25 years, leads global commercialization and go-to-market strategy for Google’s Search, Travel, Retail, and Commerce products and seems to love technology.

He joined the company through Google’s acquisition of AdMob in 2009, where he led the Performance Sales team, and helped build and scale what is now a multibillion-dollar product suite. His team works with product management and sales to bring feedback from the market to product and bring products to market.

2025 will become one of the most critical years for Google. Last week, Google CEO Sundar Pichai held an employee meeting to talk about the upcoming challenges and how important it will become for Google to scale Gemini, the company's AI platform. It will become more important as the company faces increased competition and regulatory hurdles and works with rapid AI advancements. Kraham's focus for his team feeds into that strategy.  

MediaPost:  What is the most important project you and your team are working on, and how will it unfold in 2025?

Creative agency Special London has tapped Richard Sweetman for a new role: general manager-client services director.

He will manage the company's business operations in the U.K.

Sweetman reports to report to Cade Heyde, global partner at Special, while the agency searches for a new CEO.<

Previously, Sweetman was client services director for the Australian branch of the agency. Other ad agency experience includes Droga5 Sydney and New York, where he was responsible for the Tiger Beer, Qantas and T-Mobile accounts.

In addition, he worked for Saatchi & Saatchi London, developing award-winning brand platforms, including Direct Line’s ‘We’re On It’, Visa’s ‘Where You Shop Matters’ and BT’s ‘Hope United.’

Heyde calls Sweetman “a razor-sharp business leader and a real nurturer of people and ideas.”

Special London's client work includes Uber Eats, Tourism New Zealand and International Schools Partnership.

Special has offices in the U.K., U.S., Australia, Japan and New Zealand.

Netflix delivered strong NFL broadcast-like viewership for its exclusive and first-time NFL airings on Christmas Day -- averaging 24.2 million U.S. viewers for two games, according to Nielsen -- and averted any industry concerning buffering or latency issues.

In addition, Netflix football airings became the most-streamed NFL games in U.S. history -- surpassing those on NBCUniversal’s Peacock streamer, which in January aired an NFL Wild Card playoff game between the Miami Dolphins-Kansas City Chiefs. Peacock earned an average 22.9 million Nielsen-measured viewers.

The first Netflix game on Wednesday -- which featured an easy win for the current Super Bowl champions Kansas City Chiefs, who beat the Pittsburgh Steelers 29-10 -- posted 24.1 million average minute audience viewers.

Game Two, in which the Baltimore Ravens beat the Houston Texans 31-2 in a blowout -- took in 24.3 million viewers.

The two games amassed a total of 65 million viewers -- with 48.4 million coming from Netflix national airings, and 17 million viewers coming from CBS local TV market viewing, out-of-home viewing, mobile and web data from Netflix, as well as the league’s NFL+ mobile viewing.

The games aired in 200 countries, with global TV viewing data set to be released on December 31.

Netflix says the Baltimore Ravens-Houston Texans game was the most-watched Christmas Day game on record among young 18-34 viewers -- with 5.1 million U.S. viewers, according to Nielsen records dating back to 2001.

This is the first of a three-year, exclusive NFL Christmas Day two-game deal for Netflix, reportedly costing the big streamer $150 million per year.

CBS Sports produced the Netflix games. NFL Media produced the pre- post- and studio half-time programming. EverWonder Studio produced the NFL Christmas Gameday show.

Industry analysts had been concerned that quality of the airings might be dinged by latency broadband issues.

Netflix had major problems in this regard on November 18 when it aired the Jake Paul/Mike Tyson boxing match.

Sixty million households watched the Paul vs. Tyson event live around the world.

As Meta works to attract more social media managers to its Threads app, Bluesky continues to build out features aimed at users looking for an alternative to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

On Christmas Day, and the first day of Hanukkah, the decentralized microblogging app began testing “Trending Topics” in Search on its mobile and web apps, which presents users with a real-time list of the most popular topics of discussion on the platform -- a feature originally launched by Twitter in 2008.

The new feature can be found by selecting the search icon at the bottom of the screen (for mobile) and the left sidebar (for web). Users can then tap any topic included on the list and be directed to posts associated with the topic.

By including a list of trending topics, Bluesky is looking to tap into what became Twitter's -- then X's -- superpower: stoking mass adoption around the unfolding of current trends and news via user-based discussion.

Per Bluesky's announcement, the new feature is still technically marked as a beta on the app, as the company plans to make alterations dependent on user feedback.

As Bluesky continues to grow, now with more than 25 million users, the platform's competition is also intensifying.

For example, Threads is up to 300 million monthly active users, and rolled out trending topics to all U.S. users in March.

Citing concerns about governmental surveillance of pregnancy, the nonprofit National Partnership for Women & Families is backing proposed privacy settlements that would restrict mobile data brokers' ability to collect or harness location information.

The agreements, unveiled earlier this month, will limit the ability of Mobilewalla to collect location data from real-time bidding auctions, and restrict Gravy Analytics from selling sensitive location data.

The National Partnership for Women & Families praised both settlements in comments to the FTC, writing that data brokers “unrestricted trade” in sensitive location data “presents an increased danger to abortion seekers and providers.”

“Data brokers’ continued collection and sale of people’s personal information, such as location data showing visits to medical facilities that provide reproductive care, harmfully undermine consumer privacy and reproductive freedom,” the group writes.

“Law enforcement can bypass court approval needed to obtain sensitive data and instead buy it from data brokers, circumventing fundamental Fourth Amendment protections,” the organization writes. “In the context of abortion and pregnancy criminalization, law enforcement access to location data enables investigators and prosecutors to identify and track pregnant people and build cases against them.”

The organization specifically supported provisions in both settlements that prevent Mobilewalla and Gravy from selling or otherwise disclosing sensitive data in products or services.

That “core provision” of the deal will prevent Mobilewallla and Gravy “from selling location data related to visits to reproductive health clinics and mitigate potential exposure to legal action for those seeking abortion care or driving loved ones out of state for such services,” the group wrote.

The restriction on sale also will prevent Mobilewalla and Gravy from “selling sensitive location data to third parties seeking to geofence clinics and target visitors with coercive anti-abortion advertising.”

Mobilewalla and been under scrutiny since at least June 2020, when it published a report analyzing thedemographics of Black Lives Matter protesters in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Minneapolis and New York. Soon after that report came out, Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) and other lawmakers questioned the company about its data practices.

The FTC is accepting comments on both proposed settlements through January 6.

 Ulta is upping its tech game by adding GLAMlab Hair Try On, an app developed with Nvidia’s generative artificial intelligence model. Using an uploaded photo, a selfie or a picture of a model, users can play with various styles and colors.

Ulta has been using machine-learning-driven try-on apps for years, but this new experience is Ulta’s first using a generative AI application.

“GLAMlab initially launched in 2016 using augmented reality technology and was introduced across Ulta Beauty’s digital platforms in 2019 to provide a unique try-on experience for beauty enthusiasts,”

says Agustina Sartori, senior director of digital innovation at Ulta Beauty, in an email to Marketing Daily. “This new generative AI-powered tool builds on that foundation, offering an even more dynamic and personalized way for guests to explore beauty virtually.”

The innovation team developed the app using Nvidia’s StyleGAN2, a style-based neural network architecture. Nvidia says that the new app used its StyleGAN2 network, training the app to “generate infinite images in a variety of styles.”

GAN, short for generative adversarial network, is a form of deep-learning architecture. GANs train two neural networks to compete against one another – hence the term “adversarial” – to create more authentic results.

“Recognizing that beauty is deeply personal, Ulta Beauty is committed to providing convenient, innovative ways for guests to discover and experiment with new looks virtually—before visiting our stores or The Salon at Ulta Beauty to bring their beauty dreams to life,” says Sartori, who is also managing director of Prisma Ventures, Ulta’s digital innovation fund.

The new application joins existing tools, such as Skin Analysis, Nail Try-On and False Lash Try-On.  “Recently, we introduced GLAMlab Looks, a one-of-a-kind beauty retail tool offering four trending holiday looks (like Flirty Flush) and three engaging filters for added inspiration,” she says. 

 Additionally, Ulta Beauty offers a virtual Hair Analysis tool powered by Myavana, which helps guests better understand hair type, texture, and needs with personalized product recommendations.

The company says GLAMlab Virtual Try On sees roughly 11.5 million visits, with users experimenting with 82 million shades of makeup, lash, brows and hair. Ulta’s Skin Analysis augmented reality app has had roughly 524,000 visits, with two-thirds of those users rating it five stars for accuracy.

Users can access the new app on Ulta Beauty’s website and mobile app. It takes about five seconds to generate the first image and about a second to compute for subsequent styles. Ulta’s next move is to adapt the tech for wigs and also connect it to in-store salons.

The company plans to incorporate virtual trials for additional hair categories like wigs and is exploring how the virtual hairstyle try-on could be connected to in-store styling services.

Humans are curious. Their longing to question, speculate and doubt has made search and advertising much more difficult to accomplish successfully. Sometimes it is preference, and other times it is bias. Will we see a Google reset?

Some of the smartest people working at Google have spent years working to fulfill the need to answer questions, which leads me to ask: how do you stifle a company that in so many ways seems to have strategies to fulfill human curiosity -- whether it’s answering questions or buying products.

Google made dozens of AI-related announcements this year, from generative AI in health and media buying to its quantum chip called Willow.

You would think a company that has been so successful in capturing market share could find the answer to make the industries it participates in more competitive. However, that would mean giving up revenue.

Google on Friday filed proposed remedies to the antitrust lawsuit with the Department of Justice (DOJ) on Friday and in a blog, explained alternative actions that the DOJ could take and the reasoning behind its response. 

Google attempted to explain why the sale of Chrome does not fit the company’s conduct that the judge found illegal, which focused on exclusive contracts with browsers such as Apple, smartphone manufacturers and telecom carriers.

The court filing was made public late Friday. The Court’s liability determination covered Google’s search-engine distribution and promotion agreements with Android mobile device manufacturers and wireless carriers and Google’s default search-engine agreements with browser developers Apple and Mozilla.

The Court concluded agreements with Apple and Mozilla were exclusive and stifled competition in traditional search and paid text ads.

Google’s solution would give these developers “greater flexibility to set rivals as defaults and guarantees annual contestability where a developer chooses to set Google as the default search engine for a particular operating system version of its browser or browsing mode.”

Google defined that flexibility as choice -- giving browser developers a choice and making the agreements annual contracts. This would enable browser developers to change the default annually. It would make browser default agreements non-exclusive and contestable on a regular basis.

Google’s proposal also includes provisions that address generative AI chatbot products. This would alleviate concerns that it could “employ exclusive distribution agreements to obtain preload of its Gemini Assistant chatbot mobile application.

Suggestions were made to make Android contracts with OEMs non-exclusive and allow them to unbundle the Google Play Store from Google Search and Chrome. It would provide flexibility in preloading multiple search engines and preloading any Google app independently of Google Search or Chrome. Again. The company said this would give Google partners additional flexibility and rivals like Microsoft more chances to bid for placement.

Google also provided suggestions that Android partners could license Google Play, Search, and/or Chrome without also licensing Google’s Gemini Assistant mobile application. Google’s PFJ further prohibits it from conditioning consideration on a partner refraining from the preload of rival generative AI assistive chatbot services.

These provisions address the potential for generative artificial intelligence chatbots to become substitutes for general search engines.