Sundar Pichai is scheduled to testify in a major U.S. antitrust trial on Monday. The trial revolves around allegations of Google’s dominant position in search and search advertising sectors, reported Reuters.
What Happened: Pichai, the head of Alphabet Inc. GOOG GOOGL, Google’s parent company, will likely discuss the company’s competitive investments, particularly in the mobile search and search advertising sectors.
The government wants to understand why Google spends billions annually to maintain its default smartphone search status.
The U.S. government has alleged that Google, which controls about 90% of the search market, is unlawfully disbursing an estimated $10 billion each year to smartphone manufacturers like Apple and telecom carriers such as AT&T.
They accused Google of making this payment to remain the default search engine on their devices, allowing the search giant to monopolize the profitable advertising market and thereby boost its profits.
Google defended these revenue-sharing agreements as lawful, maintaining that its investments aim to preserve competitiveness in its search and advertising businesses. The company also argued that users dissatisfied with default settings can switch to other search providers.
Why It Matters: The trial’s outcome could significantly affect Google and the broader tech industry. Previously, Apple’s senior VP of services, Eddy Cue, testified about a $19 billion search deal with Google to secure its position as the default search engine on Cupertino’s platforms.
Moreover, Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, also testified during the trial about the impact of Apple’s selection of its default search engine, indicating that his company was willing to obscure its “Bing” brand on Apple devices to dislodge Google.
Earlier, it was also reported that Apple considered replacing Google with DuckDuckGo as Safari’s default search engine for its private mode but later scrapped the idea.
Photo Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons
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