A federal judge on Thursday slammed a key element of Google’s defense as closing arguments begin in a landmark antitrust case that could upend the company’s online search empire.
Judge Amit Mehta is expected to rule later this year on whether Google maintains an illegal monopoly in the online search market, facing stiff competition despite holding about 90% market share. The focus is on the company’s claims that
Google’s lawyers cited smaller, privacy-focused search engines like DuckDuckGo, tech giants like Microsoft and Amazon, and even media outlets like ESPN as competitors for users’ attention.
“Do you really think DuckDuckGo is a competitor to Google?” the judge asked Google’s lawyers. According to AFP news agency.
According to statistics revealed during the trial, DuckDuckGo’s market share is less than 3% compared to Google’s 90%.
Mehta also questioned whether rival search engines would be able to offer similar default deal packages to others, given the multibillion-dollar price tag set by Google.
This exchange is just one example of the pointed questions Mehta asked both Google and the Justice Department’s legal team.
Mehta questioned whether the Justice Department’s legal team had sufficiently shown that Google’s default deal had an anticompetitive impact on rivals or stifled their ability to innovate.
Closing arguments will conclude on Friday.
Jonathan Canter, the Justice Department’s antitrust chief, and Kent Walker, Google’s president of international affairs, were also among those present in court.
Justice Department claims Google relies on billions of dollars in payments to partners (including $26.3 billion in 2021 alone) to enable its search engine by default on most smartphones did.
The judge warned that government lawyers face a “difficult road” to prove that Google has failed to innovate online search over the past decade.
Mehta noted that at one point during the hearing, Microsoft acknowledged that it was not putting enough resources into building its mobile search business.
“It’s not anti-competitive. It’s the fact that Google was smart enough to jump on the mobile bandwagon before Microsoft did,” Mehta said.
A Justice Department lawyer pushed back, arguing that “just because one rival made a mistake doesn’t mean Google can monopolize this market forever.”
Several prominent witnesses appeared at last fall’s trial, including Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and Apple executive Eddie Cue.
Unredacted documents from Mr. Cue’s testimony that surfaced on Tuesday show that Google paid Apple a whopping $20 billion in 2022 alone to be the default search engine for its Safari web browser.
If Mr. Mehta ultimately rules against Google, a second trial will be held to determine the appropriate remedies to address the monopoly issue.
Experts say that could include introducing a “choice screen” for users and breaking up Google.
Google is not the only tech giant in the midst of federal antitrust litigation.
The Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple earlier this year.
Separately, the Federal Trade Commission has pending litigation against Meta and Amazon.
with post wire
