The last hearing of the trial in which the US Government seeks to determine whether the technology giant Google engages in illegal monopolistic practices with its web search engine, which could have relevant consequences for the entire Internet, has closed this Friday between clashes and bodies of lawyers . of the Executive with the representatives of the company.
The lawyers of the Department of Justice assured that the American company is an illegal monopoly that invests about 20,000 million dollars a year in getting rid of the competition of its rivals in the market. Google, on the other hand, ensures that its position as a leader responds to the characteristics of its searches, which it defends as the best.
One of the central questions of the trial, which the courts began in September of last year, has been whether Google’s position in the market is due to the agreements it has signed with several companies, such as Apple, for its search engine to be The default on brand devices.
According to trial documents made public, Google paid $20 billion (about €18.65 billion) in 2022 alone to make its search engine the default option on iPhones and the Safari browser. Similar agreements have made Google’s search engine the default setting on devices running the Android operating system (created by Google) and the Mozilla browser.
Another aspect that the Department of Justice lawyers highlighted on the last day of the trial is that, in addition to dominating the browser market, since its founding in 1998, Google has monopolized advertising in search engines, forcing companies to use its products to the while increasing prices.
Specifically, Department of Justice lawyer David Dahlquist signed this Friday that “advertising revenue is what drives Google’s monopoly power today” and argued that Google’s position as a monopoly allows it to charge prices. . artificially high prices for advertisers.
Faced with this, the lawyer leading Google’s defense, John Schmidtlein, said this Friday that in reality the income obtained by the ad search engine has decreased in recent years due to competition from platforms such as TikTok, Facebook and Instagram.
In its closing arguments, the tech giant also stated that users could easily switch to other search engines if they wanted, but would prefer Google. During the trial, companies like Apple testified that they partnered with Google because they considered their search engine superior. Judge Amit P. Mehta, who is presiding over the case, has not yet said when he will hand down a ruling, although it is expected to take several months.
The Department of Justice has spent three years building the case, which began when Donald Trump was president (2017-2021) and which Democrat Joe Biden inherited when he came to power in 2021. Data from the analysis company Similarweb show that Google has with 90% of the search engine market in the United States and 91% worldwide.
