Google has questioned the motivations of the US Justice Department's top antitrust official in a filing to a district court, arguing that his past clients create an ethical conflict and raise doubts about the government's lawsuit against the tech giant.
The US Justice Department has started a 10-week trial against Google, accusing the company of monopolistic practices in dominating the search engine market through its business partnerships, including with Apple, to ensure its search engine is the default on mobile devices.
Google previewed its defense against the U.S. government's charges of illegal monopolization, claiming that its distribution agreements do not harm competition and that consumers have the ability to easily change search engine defaults.
Google will face a high-stakes antitrust trial brought by the US government and multiple states, which could have significant implications for the tech giant's dominant search business.
The landmark antitrust trial against Google marks a broader reconsideration of the notion that the internet is inherently open and self-regulating, as regulators seek to prevent dominant technology companies from stifling innovation in emerging fields such as artificial intelligence.
The government's antitrust case against Google, which parallels the landmark case against Microsoft 25 years ago, lacks the same cultural impact despite similar accusations of unfair market dominance.
Google maintains a dominant position in the global search engine market with a 90.7% market share, while its competitors like Bing and Yahoo lag far behind, according to data from Similarweb. However, Google is currently facing a civil antitrust lawsuit by the U.S. Justice Department for alleged anticompetitive practices. Bing, despite its AI-powered version, has not made significant progress in challenging Google's dominance.
The Justice Department's antitrust trial against Google began with claims that the company pursued agreements to be the default search engine on mobile devices, while Google argued that its search engine's quality was the primary reason for such agreements.
During the US Department of Justice's trial against Google, the court sealed off two hours of testimony from a Verizon executive, sparking objections from the DOJ over the sealing of important information that is crucial to the public's understanding of the case.
Google executive Jerry Dischler testified in a landmark antitrust trial that the company quietly increased ad prices on its search results by 5% to 10% to meet revenue targets, without informing advertisers.
DuckDuckGo CEO testifies in federal court that Google's exclusive contracts hindered the search engine's efforts to become the default for private browsing modes in other browsers.
The Department of Justice was ordered to remove exhibits from its website in the antitrust trial against Google after Google complained that the DOJ was sharing trial exhibits online. Judge Amit Mehta stated that the exhibits are public documents once admitted into evidence, but a final ruling on public access is yet to be made.
The Department of Justice has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google, alleging that the company's billion-dollar deals to be the default search engine on smartphones have created a monopoly, and if the trial is successful, Google may be forced to break up its various businesses.
Efforts to limit transparency and seal testimony in the federal antitrust case against Google have made it one of the most secretive trials of the past few decades, with more than half of the trial's testimony being given behind closed doors and major companies like Apple and Microsoft also pushing for secrecy.
Apple executive Eddy Cue testified in the US v. Google antitrust trial, stating that Apple believed in protecting user privacy and that Google was the best search engine option, while the Justice Department questioned whether Apple's choice was based on economics or the best product.
The Federal Court of Appeal in the USA has ruled that Google is not exempt from journalistic or artistic work, opening the door for people to demand that their names in articles be made unsearchable, also known as the right to be forgotten.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella testified during the US government's antitrust trial against Google, warning of a "nightmare" scenario for the internet if Google's dominance in online search continues, as it could give Google an unassailable advantage in artificial intelligence (AI) due to the vast amount of search data it collects, threatening to further entrench its power.
The antitrust case against Google puts the annual payment it makes to Apple for being the default search engine at risk, which constitutes 14-16% of Apple's profits, but Bernstein analysts believe Apple has options to mitigate the potential impact, such as partnering with another search engine or launching its own.
The New York Times, along with other major news outlets, has filed a motion to make the antitrust trial against Google more transparent, arguing that the current lack of access undermines the public's faith in the justice system.
Google has asked a California federal court to dismiss a proposed class action lawsuit that claims the company's scraping of data to train generative artificial-intelligence systems violates millions of people's privacy and property rights, arguing that the use of public data is legal and necessary for training AI systems.
