![]() “We wanted to make sure that as we contemplate a longer-term deal that the notion of default is implemented in a similar way” going forward, Pichai said, reflecting on his negotiations with Apple services chief Eddy Cue in 2016. Because Apple chooses which queries to refer to Google, and which it seeks to answer through Apple’s own search technology, Google feared that Apple might, for example, decide to send some search queries to Amazon. There’s clearly value to that, and that’s what we were looking to do” with Google’s distribution deals.Īs Google has renegotiated its lucrative and notoriously opaque contract with Apple over the years - in 2016 and again in 2021 - Google moved to limit how Apple could treat search queries its users entered into its products, Pichai testified. “Making it the default,” he said, “we know it would lead to increased usage of our products and services. ![]() Google pays Apple more money in search-default payments than it pays to any Android handset maker for search distribution, Pichai acknowledged, but “a big part of the difference” is that Google has separate deals with Android smartphone manufacturers and telecom carriers, whereas Apple “is both the and they have control over their telecom channels,” making the Apple figure appear larger, he testified.Ī key question throughout the trial has been why Google has seen fit to pay Apple and other search distribution partners such large sums if it is as easy as Google claims for users to switch search providers.Īsked that question point-blank by Google’s own lawyers, Pichai did not shy away from acknowledging a connection between a search engine’s default status and increased scale. ![]() In 2021, Google paid $26.3 billion to secure default agreements with its partners worldwide, according to a slide introduced in the trial last week. Google has paid Apple more than an estimated $10 billion a year to be the default on Apple devices and software. The US government case against Google focuses on the company’s web of contracts that make its search engine the default on millions of devices and browsers around the globe. Pichai’s testimony represents Google’s attempt to rebut claims by rivals including Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who testified last month that Google has thwarted competition in search and risks dominating the artificial intelligence sector by training its large language models on search query data that it controls. “The correlation was pretty clear to see,” Pichai said, before Google attorney John Schmidtlein presented an internal email from 2010 showing research that users who switched from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer performed 48% more Google searches. Users of Mozilla’s Firefox browser that switched to Chrome performed 27% more searches on Google, the email said. The history lesson is central to Google’s defense that the company’s search dominance owes to people preferring Google because it is the best, not because it behaved illegally to gain and preserve a monopoly.īy making Google’s search engine a seamless part of the Chrome browser, and by offering users a minimalist design that created more room for search results and web content within a browser window, Google believed it would drive more search usage, Pichai testified. Standing at a podium in a dark suit, crisp white shirt and gray tie, Pichai described how Google’s investments in Chrome, its proprietary web browser, accelerated users’ experiences with popular websites and led them to conduct more Google searches. Pichai, whom Google called as a star witness, opened his testimony at the US District Court for the District of Columbia by recounting his journey from Chennai, India to Google and his path to becoming the tech company’s CEO in 2015. Google CEO Sundar Pichai took the stand Monday to defend the search giant in the largest tech antitrust trial since the Microsoft case of the 1990s, marking a climactic moment in the US government’s weeks-long effort to prove that Google has illegally monopolized the online search market.
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