A carve-out, not a green light
On 23 June 2026 the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission granted Google and Epic Games interim authorisation under section 91 of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 to implement parts of their global litigation settlement — but only to the extent the settlement's rollout in other jurisdictions affects apps published on Google Play by Australian developers. Authorisation for the settlement's application to Australian consumers themselves was explicitly withheld (ACCC authorisation register).
That distinction matters more than it sounds. The settlement Google and Epic struck introduces a tiered Play Store fee structure — a 10% service fee on a developer's first US$1 million in annual earnings, rising to 20–25% above that threshold, plus a 20% fee on transactions routed through external "link-out" payments — alongside the right for developers to point users to alternative billing systems entirely. That structure took effect on 30 June 2026 in the UK, the US and the European Economic Area, with Australia, Japan and South Korea scheduled to follow only by the end of 2026, and the rest of the world by September 2027 (MacRumors).
An Australian developer selling into the UK or EU market, in other words, is now operating under one fee regime for those sales and another at home — and needed the ACCC's blessing simply to implement the settlement terms without falling foul of Australian competition law while doing business offshore. Granting that narrow slice of authorisation, while declining to extend the settlement to Australian users before it has been separately scrutinised, is a defensible middle path: it unblocks a cross-border compliance problem without pre-approving terms that were negotiated in US litigation, not before an Australian regulator.
The steelman for caution
The ACCC's reluctance to wave through the user-facing provisions deserves a fair hearing before it gets criticised. A settlement struck between two US litigants was not stress-tested against Australian conditions — including the Reserve Bank of Australia's payment surcharge rules, local consumer protection law, or the competitive dynamics of the Australian app economy specifically. Importing foreign settlement terms wholesale, without an independent authorisation process, risks locking in commercial arrangements that were optimised for a different regulatory environment. That the ACCC drew the line at developers — who can better absorb short-term compliance costs and have direct commercial interest in the change — while withholding a decision on consumer-facing terms, reflects a proportionate, evidence-first approach rather than reflexive obstruction.
But the settlement itself is not holding
The caution looks more prescient in light of what happened next. On 15 July 2026 — three weeks after the ACCC's interim authorisation and barely a fortnight into the new fee structure's operation in the UK, US and EEA — Google and Epic jointly withdrew the equivalent settlement covering the United States, reverting to Judge James Donato's original October 2024 injunction, which requires Google to host rival app stores within the Play Store itself. Third-party storefronts began appearing inside Google Play for US Android users from 22 July 2026 (Android Authority).
The practical effect on Australian developers selling into the US may be limited — Google says it is proceeding with the settlement fee structure in other markets regardless. But the episode undercuts the premise the ACCC's authorisation rested on: that this is a stable, negotiated global settlement whose terms merely need to spill over into Australia on a predictable timetable. Three weeks after Canberra signed off on the spillover, the deal's country of origin discarded the settlement approach entirely in favour of a court-imposed structural remedy. Australian developers and regulators are being asked to authorise and plan around an arrangement that is still being renegotiated in real time.
A second, harder track for Apple
Google's case is proceeding by settlement; Apple's is not. On 21 April 2026 the Federal Court of Australia granted the ACCC leave to intervene in the remedies phase of Epic Games v Apple, following the Court's August 2025 finding that Apple misused its market power by restricting alternative app distribution and in-app payment methods on iOS. The relief hearing resumed on 28 April 2026, with the ACCC's submissions confined to public-interest questions around any remedial orders the Court might impose (ACCC media release).
That means Australia is running two parallel, structurally different processes toward the same policy goal — opening app distribution and payment choice on mobile platforms — one via negotiated settlement authorisation, the other via litigated court remedy. Neither will land on the same timeline, and neither guarantees the same outcome for Australian consumers.
The real cost is sequencing, not caution
The ACCC's instinct to separate developer relief from consumer-facing approval is sound competition regulation. The problem is what surrounds it: an authorisation-by-litigation model that leaves Australian users scheduled to receive fee relief and payment choice roughly six months after their UK and EU counterparts — on a settlement that, as of mid-July 2026, is already being unwound in its market of origin. A jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction rollout driven by two foreign lawsuits is not a sustainable way to set competition policy for a market the size of Australia's. If the ACCC believes app store gatekeeping is a genuine competition problem — and the Apple finding shows it does — the durable fix is a domestic ex ante framework, rather than waiting on the next update from a Californian courtroom.