US Justice Department (DOJ) officials on Monday objected to removing the public from the court during some discussions of how Google prices its online advertising, one of the issues at the heart of the antitrust trial underway in Washington, Reuters reported.
The government’s case seeks to show that Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG)'s Google broke antitrust law to maintain its dominance in online search, substantially boosting its advertising revenues that contributed greatly to the company’s $1 trillion market valuation.
Google, meanwhile, has put forward its defense that the company’s dominant market share reflects the quality of its product rather than any illegal actions to build monopolies in some aspects of its business.
US government representative David Dahlquist introduced a redacted document that had a short back and forth about Google's pricing for search advertising, which he argued should not be redacted.
"This satisfies public interest because it's at the core of the DOJ case against Google," he said.
John Schmidtlein, a legal representative for Google, then urged Judge Amit Mehta that all discussions of pricing be in a closed session, which means the public and reporters must leave the courtroom.
Such was the situation early Monday when Verizon executive Brian Higgins gave testimony about the company's decision to always pre-install Google's Chrome browser with Google search on its mobile phones.
Two hours of that testimony was closed to the public, and the government contends that payments of $10 billion annually to mobile carriers and others have helped Google achieve dominant default positions on smartphones.
Class A shares of Alphabet edged 0.3% lower to $137.80 in mid-afternoon trading on Tuesday.
Contact Sean at sean@proactiveinvestors.com