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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 figures” but did not specify how much Google pays to be the default search engine on the majority of 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 on defaults, understanding people won’t change them.” Attendees included the Nebraska attorney general and top DOJ antitrust officials. They purchase standard exclusivity because defaults are very important.
The DOJ’s historic antitrust action, which claims that Google has attempted to maintain its internet search monopoly in contravention of antitrust laws, is based on Google’s contracts. A separate antitrust lawsuit against the search giant is being pursued by state attorneys general and is currently before Mehta.
Although a formal trial won’t begin until next year, the first substantive hearing in the matter took place on Thursday. It was a daylong tutorial where each side presented their positions on Google’s operations.
The federal government’s first significant move to check the dominance of the internet titans 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 negative effects that large tech platforms can have on the economy and the health of children was held on Thursday at the White House.
John Schmidtlein, an attorney for Google, claimed that the DOJ and states understand the market and concentrate too much 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 where people go to look for information.
“To shop on Amazon, you don’t need to go to Google. You don’t have to go to Google to book aircraft tickets on Expedia,” he said. Google doesn’t face the same rivalry for every question, but it 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 agreements 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.
