Over the past two and a half weeks, Google has called a dozen witnesses to defend itself against accusations by the Justice Department and a group of state attorneys general that it illegally maintained a monopoly on search and advertising, in a landmark antitrust case that could reshape technology. force.
Google’s lawyers are ready to conclude their arguments in the case: US et al. against Google, on Tuesday, which will be followed by a government rebuttal. Judge Amit P. Mehta of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, who is presiding over the bench trial, is expected to issue a verdict next year after both sides summarize their cases in writing and present their arguments. finals.
The company’s main defense has focused on how its actions were justified and how it helped consumers and competitors. These are Google’s main arguments.
How Google’s actions were justified
He paid Apple an appropriate (and undisclosed) amount of money
The crux of the US case against Google is that the company paid Apple and other tech platforms to become the default search engine on the iPhone and other devices, thereby preventing rivals from competing and preventing Apple from potentially developing its own product. search.
But on the witness stand, Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, said there was “value” in being the default search engine on a device and called deals with other companies sound business decisions.
Google paid $26.3 billion to make its search engine the default selection on mobile and desktop browsers in 2021, according to internal company data presented during the trial. Most of that amount, about $18 billion, went to Apple, The New York Times reported. Kevin Murphy, a Google economic expert, testified Monday that Google shared 36 percent of search revenue from the default deal with Apple.
Pichai testified that he repeatedly renewed the search engine agreement with Apple because it was working well, leading to an increase in search usage and revenue and benefiting Apple, Google and their shareholders. He said Google paid Apple a lot to protect users’ search experience on iPhones, without knowing whether Apple would degrade that experience if Google had not improved the financial terms of the deal.
“There was a lot of uncertainty about what would happen if the deal didn’t exist,” he said.
Google isn’t the only search game in town
Rejecting the idea that other search engines were too small to compete for browsers’ default status, Google’s lawyers argued in court that rivals had been able to win contracts but couldn’t keep them because of the poor quality of their products. .
They cited a case in 2014 when Mozilla, which makes the Firefox browser, abandoned a default search partnership with Google and selected Yahoo.
The choice was unpopular with users and disastrous for the Firefox browser, Mozilla CEO Mitchell Baker said in a statement presented at the trial. Yahoo’s user experience deteriorated and became overloaded with ads, he said, and it was “heartbreaking” to send users to Yahoo. Mozilla returned to Google in 2017.
Government lawyers pointed to Google’s more than 90 percent share of the search market as evidence that the company’s actions stifled significant competition. But Google lawyers said its share of the search market was only part of the story, because the company competed widely with more players, including TikTok and Amazon, where consumers search for information online.
The government also accused Google of abusing its position in the online advertising market. Google again sought to widen the opening in the lawsuit, saying it was competing for ad spending that could otherwise have gone to any company from Expedia to Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.
How Google helped people and encouraged competition
It has invested more than its search rivals to make its product great.
One of Google’s defense arguments was that its focus and investments in search did not harm consumers or others, as the government has tried to argue, but instead generated benefits.
On more than one occasion Google referred to the sums of money it spends on research and development. Last year, the figure rose to about $40 billion. Prabhakar Raghavan, Google’s head of search, testified that such investments helped the company offer the best technology to users.
“It would be foolish for us not to give our best,” he said. That was why Google employed 8,000 engineers and product managers for its search engine, including about 1,000 people focused on quality, he added.
Google argued that its rivals had not invested in the same way. Cross-examining Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive, earlier in the trial, a Google lawyer pressed him on whether Microsoft still devoted fewer employees to its search engine, Bing, than Google did to its search product. Nadella avoided details of Microsoft personnel and said the company was investing primarily in core areas of the search business.
Their innovations have helped consumers around the world.
Google said it had set the pace for technological advances. It said it had updated its Chrome browser every six weeks, more frequently than Microsoft had traditionally updated its Internet Explorer browser. It has introduced Android features that forced Apple to respond, resulting in more apps and other smartphone features, Pichai testified at trial.
During questioning, Justice Department lawyers tried to emphasize that Google could have brought more innovation to users, but did not do so in order to safeguard its monopoly. They pointed to a 2019 Google proposal to create an incognito search engine, which would not have stored any data about users but could have lost the company billions in revenue. Google decided not to create the browser.
Justice Department lawyers sought to highlight Google’s delay in bringing generative ai to users, keeping the technology until OpenAI launched ChatGPT last November. It was part of a broader government argument that Google had not adequately improved products for consumers until it felt competitive pressure.
The government also accused Google of using its power in search and advertising to raise ad prices when it faces a revenue crisis. The company’s employees testified that it balanced its pursuit of revenue from each ad with ensuring that users generally saw high-quality ads in their search results.
Their actions have been broadly competitive, not anti-competitive.
The Justice Department argued in court that Google’s actions harmed competition and denied benefits to consumers. If the government proves harm exists, it is up to Google to show that those harms were outweighed by the competitive benefits created by its actions.
To that end, Google focused the evidence on when it introduced its search engine and other products and how its entry into those markets increased competition.
When Google launched its search engine in 1998, it was in a search market ruled by Yahoo, AltaVista and Ask Jeeves, the company argued. Its Chrome browser, which debuted in 2008, revolutionized a browser market where Microsoft’s Internet Explorer reigned supreme, Google said. And it fostered greater competition against Apple’s iPhone with the Android operating system, which it introduced in 2008, the company said.
Cecilia Kang contributed with reports.
