The judge overseeing the landmark US antitrust case against Google has tried to puncture both sides’ cases during that time. argument conclusion Thursday as he weighed a ruling that could reshape the tech industry.
Justice Amit P. Mehta presided over the first day of closing debates where technology antitrust has the greatest consequences since the US government sued Microsoft in the late 1990s. The Department of Justice has sued Google, accusing it of illegally protecting a monopoly in online search. Google has denied the claims.
On Thursday, Judge Mehta questioned the government’s argument that Google’s dominance has harmed the quality of the online information search experience. But he also pushed Google to defend its central argument that it does not have a monopoly because consumers use other companies like Amazon to search for shopping items and TikTok to search for music clips.
“Certainly I don’t think the average person would say, ‘Google and Amazon are the same thing,’” Judge Mehta said.
His ruling – expected in the coming weeks or months – will help set a precedent for a series of government challenges to the scale and power of the tech giants. Federal regulators have also filed antitrust lawsuits against Apple, Amazon and Meta, and a second lawsuit against Google over online advertising.
Prior to the commencement of closing arguments in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia courtroom, Jonathan Kanterthe head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, approached Kent Walker, president of global affairs at Google to chat.
Judge Mehta began the proceedings by questioning Kenneth Dintzer, the Justice Department’s chief courtroom attorney for the trial, about the search innovation.
The government has argued that the lack of competition in the online search business – where almost 90% of all searches are done with Google – means Google does not need to invest in the quality of the search experience. mine. But Judge Mehta told Mr. Dintzer that it was difficult to “argue that search looks a lot different today than it did 10 to 15 years ago” and that some of those changes are due to Google’s work.
“It seems to me that it is a difficult path for you to go down for me to conclude that Google has not innovated enough,” Judge Mehta said.
The Justice Department also argued that because Google was a monopoly and did not face strong competition, it did not include privacy protections in its search engine. The judge interrupted Mr. Dintzer to say that there could be a “trade-off” between privacy and search quality. Judge Mehta added that his challenge was how to measure whether Google was doing enough to protect user privacy.
Judge Mehta pressed Google’s lead litigator, John E. Schmidtlein, by arguing that companies like Amazon and ESPN are real competitors to Google’s search engine. He noted that if he wanted to know who the shortstop was for the Baltimore Orioles in 1983, he would most likely use Google.
The judge questioned how another company could beat Google to become the search engine that autofills Apple’s web browser, Safari. He admitted that it was impossible without billions of dollars spent to build a competitive search engine and billions more to pay Apple.
Judge Mehta also asked why Google needed to pay to be the default search engine on the web if its products were already better than those of its competitors.
In the middle of an exchange with the judge, Mr. Schmidtlein gave a simple explanation: “Google wins because it’s better.”
