The US Justice Department informed a federal judge on Thursday that Alphabet Inc.’s Google illegally pays billions of dollars each year to Apple Inc., Samsung Electronics Co., and other telecom giants to maintain its position as the top search engine. Attorney for the DOJ Kenneth Dintzer referred to the payments as “enormous numbers” but did not specify how much Google spends as the default search engine on most browsers and all US mobile phones.
At a hearing in Washington that served as the case’s first significant confrontation, Dintzer informed Judge Amit Mehta that “Google invests billions in defaults, knowing people won’t change them.” Attendees included the Nebraska attorney general and top DOJ antitrust officials. They purchase default exclusivity because defaults are significant. The DOJ’s historic antitrust lawsuit, which claims that Google has attempted to maintain its online search monopoly in violation of antitrust laws, is based on Google’s contracts.
A separate antitrust lawsuit against the search giant is being pursued by state attorneys and is currently before Mehta. Although a formal trial isn’t anticipated to begin until next year, the first substantive hearing in the case occurred on Thursday. It was a daylong tutorial during which each side presented its perspectives on Google’s operations.
The federal government’s first significant effort to check the power of the tech giants was the antitrust lawsuit against Google, which was brought in the final days of the Trump administration and is still ongoing under President Joe Biden. A roundtable discussion on the adverse effects that major tech platforms can have on the economy and children’s health was held on Thursday at the White House.
John Schmidtlein, an attorney for Google, claimed that the DOJ and states misunderstand the market and concentrate too heavily on smaller competitors like Microsoft Corp.’s Bing and DuckDuckGo. Instead, he claimed, Google is up against dozens of other businesses, such as Amazon.com Inc., Grubhub Inc., ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok, Meta Platforms Inc., and other places people go to search for information.
“You can shop on Amazon without going to Google. Expedia is the place to purchase airline tickets, and he said, not Google. Google doesn’t face the same competition for every query, but that doesn’t mean the business isn’t up against stiff opposition.
A search engine’s success depends on having up-to-date information on user search queries, according to lawyers for the DOJ, the states, and Google. Chrome, the most widely used browser, and Android, the second-most widely used mobile operating system, are both under Google’s control.
In his speech, Dintzer of the DOJ concentrated on the workings of Google’s search engine and how its default contracts have encircled potential competitors. According to Dintzer, Google has agreements with Apple, the three US telecom providers — AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc., and T-Mobile US Inc. — as well as the majority of browsers, smartphone manufacturers like Samsung and Motorola Solutions Inc., to ensure that its search engine is preinstalled on new phones and set as the default.
According to him, both Amazon’s Fire tablets and Microsoft’s Edge browser use Bing by default. According to Dintzer, Google’s contracts make it the “gateway” through which most people access websites on the internet, preventing competitors from acquiring the necessary scale to compete with its search engine. He states, “Default exclusivity allows Google to deny rivals’ data systemically.”
They partner with Google because they want to, not because they have to, according to Schmidtlein. The business “had extraordinary success and was engaged in highly worthwhile work. Competition based on merit is legal. US v. Google, 20-cv-3010, US District Court, District of Columbia, is the case at hand (Washington).
