Alphabet Inc\u2019s Google pays billions of dollars each year to Apple Inc, Samsung Electronics Co and other telecom giants to illegally maintain its spot as the No. 1 search engine, the US Justice Department told a federal judge Thursday.<\/p>\n
DOJ attorney Kenneth Dintzer didn\u2019t disclose how much Google spends to be the default search engine on most browsers and all US mobile phones, but described the payments as \u201cenormous numbers.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGoogle invests billions in defaults, knowing people won\u2019t change them,\u201d Dintzer told Judge Amit Mehta during a hearing in Washington that marked the first major face-off in the case and drew top DOJ antitrust officials and Nebraska\u2019s attorney general among the spectators.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are buying default exclusivity because defaults matter a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Google\u2019s contracts form the basis of the DOJ\u2019s landmark antitrust lawsuit, which alleges the company has sought to maintain its online search monopoly in violation of antitrust laws. State attorneys general are pursuing a parallel antitrust suit against the search giant, also pending before Mehta.<\/p>\n
A trial isn\u2019t expected to start formally until next year, but Thursday\u2019s hearing was the first substantive one in the case — a daylong tutorial where each side laid out its views on Google\u2019s business.<\/p>\n
The Google antitrust suit, filed in the waning days of the Trump administration, was the federal government\u2019s first major effort to rein in the power of the tech giants, which continues under President Joe Biden. The White House Thursday hosted a roundtable with experts to explore the harm major tech platforms can wreak on the economy and children\u2019s health.<\/p>\n
Google\u2019s attorney John Schmidtlein said the DOJ and states misunderstand the market and focus too narrowly on smaller search engine rivals like Microsoft Corp\u2019s Bing and DuckDuckGo.<\/p>\n
Instead, Google faces competition from dozens of other companies, he said, including ByteDance Ltd\u2019s TikTok, Meta Platforms Inc, Amazon.com Inc, Grubhub Inc and additional sites sites where consumers go to search for information.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t have to go to Google to shop on Amazon. You don\u2019t have to go to Google to buy plane tickets on Expedia,\u201d he said. \u201cThe fact that Google doesn\u2019t face the same competition on every query doesn\u2019t mean the company doesn\u2019t face tough competition.\u201d<\/p>\n
Having fresh data on user search queries is key to a search engine\u2019s success, lawyers for DOJ, the states and Google all agreed. Google controls the most popular browser, Chrome, and the second-most popular mobile operating system, Android.<\/p>\n
In his presentation, DOJ\u2019s Dintzer focused on the mechanics of Google\u2019s search engine and how its default contracts have hemmed in potential rivals.<\/p>\n
On mobile, Google contracts with Apple, smartphone makers like Samsung and Motorola Solutions Inc, most browsers and the three US telecom carriers – AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc and T-Mobile US Inc – to ensure its search engine is set as the default and comes preinstalled on new phones, Dintzer said. Microsoft\u2019s search engine, Bing, is the default on the company\u2019s Edge browser and Amazon\u2019s Fire tablets, he said.<\/p>\n
Google\u2019s contracts make it the \u201cgateway\u201d by which most people find websites on the internet, which has allowed it to prevent rivals from gaining the scale that would be needed to challenge its search engine, Dintzer said.<\/p>\n
\u201cDefault exclusivity allows Google to systemically deny rivals\u2019 data,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n