In a stunning testimony on Monday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that Google used unfair tactics that led to its dominance as a search engine. Nadella testified in a courtroom as part of the government’s biggest antitrust trial against Alphabet, Google’s parent company. According to the Justice Department, Google has allegedly abused the dominance of its ubiquitous search engine to throttle competition and innovation at the expense of consumers, allegations that echo a similar case which was brought against Microsoft in the late 1990s. Google’s dominance as a default browser on smartphones and computers was due to agreements, Nadella said in the courtroom.
This is the biggest US antitrust trial which has moved to its fourth week of testimony before US District Judge Amit Mehta. Nadella was called to the witness stand of this antitrust trial. The District Judge is not expected to issue a decision in the case until next year. The focal point of the Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit against Google revolves around the agreements Google made with Apple and various other device manufacturers to incorporate Google’s search engine.
Google holds some 90 per cent of the search market and The Justice Department alleges that Google has exploited the dominance of its universally present search engine to suppress competition and innovation at the expense of consumers. The government has accused Google of illegally paying $10 billion annually to Apple along with other smartphone makers and wireless carriers like AT&T, to be the default in search on their devices in order to maintain dominance.
Nadella, in his testimony, said that Microsoft could never compete against the search engine colossus and that it was largely due to its arrangements with Apple. “You can call it popular, but to me it’s dominant,” Nadella said to a Google lawyer during tense cross examination. He said that Google’s unfair tactics has led to its dominance as a search engine, foiling his company’s rival program, Bing.
The Microsoft CEO expressed his concern about Google being able to use its dominance in search to bully content providers that are key to training generative AI models.
He also disclosed that Microsoft Corp. was open to obscuring the “Bing” brand of its search engine on Apple Inc. devices as part of negotiations with the iPhone maker. Attaining the default search engine position from Apple would have a profound impact, according to Nadella.
Nadella expressed his concern about Google being able to use its dominance in search to bully content providers that are key to training generative AI models.