Source: AFP
A US judge on Thursday struck down central appeals from both the US government and lawyers for Google as he heard their closing arguments in a landmark antitrust trial in Washington.
Federal Judge Amit Mehta, whose ruling is expected later this year, asked his questions during two days of hearings that come six months after the filing was completed.
The case is the first of five major US government lawsuits to go to trial, with Meta, Amazon, Apple and a separate case against Google also headed to federal court.
The trial is the first time the US Department of Justice (DOJ) has taken a major technology company to court since Microsoft came under fire more than two decades ago for dominating its Windows operating system.
The decision in the search engine case will be made by Judge Mehta, who presided over months of testimony that saw Google CEO Sundar Pichai and other top executives take the stand.
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At the heart of the government’s case are the huge payments Google makes to Apple and other companies to keep its world-leading search engine as the default on iPhones, web browsers and other products.
The trial revealed payments reaching tens of billions of dollars each year in order for Google to maintain its prime real estate in Apple hardware or the Safari and Mozilla browsers.
In 2022, Google paid Apple $20 billion for default status, trial documents unsealed this week showed.
DOJ lawyers allege that Google achieved and perpetuated its dominance — and strangled its rivals — through these default agreements that also extended to Samsung and other device makers.
However, Judge Mehta expressed doubts that the case had sufficiently established the adverse effects necessary for the agreements to be considered anticompetitive under US law and precedent.
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The key precedent is the landmark Microsoft case, which helped define how a technology platform can illegally abuse its monopoly to punish rivals.
But Mehta concluded that Google’s case was very different from Microsoft’s because it did not involve agreements to outright block competing browsers and other products.
“This case is different” because an iPhone user has the option to download and use rival apps, Mehta said.
“You have to show actual anticompetitive effects. You have to create foreclosure first, and if you can’t, you lose,” Mehta told US government lawyers.
Billions at Apple
Mehta also poked holes in Google’s defenses, questioning how any rival search engine with a similar quality product could gain access to the default deals if the costs required tens of billions of dollars.
“Even if they can meet on that (quality) battlefield, then they will have to spend billions more to make Apple whole,” Mehta said.
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Mehta also addressed questions about whether search queries on Amazon, Facebook or Expedia compete with Google, as the tech giant has argued.
Including activity on those sites would hurt the US case, which is based on keeping that general search, in which Google has over 80 percent of the US market share, is the relevant market.
Mehta also supported Google’s claim that DuckDuckGo, the privacy-focused search engine, was a competitor.
“Do you really think DuckDuckGo is a competitor to Google?” Mehta asked Google’s lawyer, who insisted it was.
Lawyers from the Justice Department also faced pointed questions, with Mehta rejecting the idea that Google’s dominance has stifled search innovation.
That would be a “tough road to go down,” the judge warned.
Source: AFP