Google made the case in court this week against charges that it created a monopoly in the search engine sector by showing that users seek Google out over competitors like Bing and others.
In a trial that began Tuesday, the US Justice Department argued that Google paid billions to companies including Apple and Samsung to pre-load Google apps and make it the default browser on users’ devices. The Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) company allegedly pays an estimated US$10 billion a year to be rolled out on Android and other mobile phones and devices.
The trial is the biggest tech antitrust trial since the case against Microsoft in 1998. US Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutor, lawyer Kenneth Dintzer, heralded the trial as pivotal for the “future of the internet” in his opening remarks.
On Thursday, the government questioned Antonio Rangel, a professor of behavioral biology at the California Institute of Technology. Rangel stated that users were likely to stick with browsers on computers and mobile phones that were pre-installed as the default application.
In its defense, Google presented data that shows users staying with its search engine when it is pre-loaded on their devices and switching away from Bing and others.
Google lawyer John Schmidtlein noted in a cross-examination of Rangel that there are plenty of instances in which a significant number of searchers were made using Google even when another search engine was the default.
Case in point, Schmidtlein cited an internal Microsoft document from several years ago documenting search use on BlackBerry devices. Verizon BlackBerries had Bing as the default, T-Mobile BlackBerries had Yahoo and Sprint had Google.
Verizon BlackBerries with Bing still showed that 91% of searches were made on Google.
That point is a key pillar of Google's defense against allegations that it illegally obtained its enormous share of the search engine market. The company argues that users clearly prefer it for its quality.
If DOJ prosecutors are successful, the court could ask Google to break up the company, as they have called for “structural relief” if they win the case.
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