Alphabet Inc. owned Google spends around more than $10 billion a year to maintain its position as the default search engine on web browsers and mobile devices, the Department of Justice said Tuesday at the opening of the biggest US antitrust trial in 25 years.
The DoJ said the search giant has exploited its dominance of the internet search market to stifle and lock out competitors. “This case is about the future of the internet and whether Google’s search engine will ever face meaningful competition,” said Kenneth Dintzer, the justice department’s lead litigator. He added, “The evidence will show they demanded default exclusivity to block rivals.”
Over the next ten weeks, federal lawyers and state attorneys general will try to prove Google rigged the market in its favor by locking in its search engine as the default choice, as per an AP report. Meanwhile a Google lawyer said, companies choose Google as the default search engine for their browsers and smartphones because it is the best one, and not because of a lack of competition.
US District Judge Amit Mehta likely won’t issue a ruling until early next year.
The justice department filed its antitrust lawsuit against Google nearly three years ago during the Donald Trump administration. Government lawyers say Google protects its franchise through a form of payola, shelling out billions of dollars annually to be the default search engine on the iPhone and on web browsers. “Google pays more than $10 billion per year for these privileged positions,” Dintzer said.
Top executives at Google and its corporate parent Alphabet Inc., as well as those from other powerful technology companies are expected to testify. Among them is likely to be Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, who succeeded Google co-founder Larry Page four years ago. Court documents also suggest that Eddy Cue, a high ranking Apple executive, might be called to the stand.
Google is in the midst of celebrating its 25th year. 25 years ago it received its first investment – a $100,000 check written by Sun Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim that helped Page and Sergey Brin to start Google in a Silicon Valley garage.
Google’s corporate parent, Alphabet, is worth $1.7 trillion and employs 182,000 people, with most of the money coming from $224 billion in annual ad sales flowing through a network of digital services anchored by a search engine that fields billions of queries a day.