Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella testified in a US federal court on Monday as part of the government’s antitrust trial against Google, alleging that the search giant’s market share and dominant position meant that it was difficult for even Microsoft to compete on the internet.
Nadella gave a three-and-a-half hour testimony in a federal court in Washington as he laid out how Microsoft could not overcome Google’s use of multibillion-dollar deals to become the default search engine on smartphones and web browsers, reported the New York Times. He said the internet is really the “Google web” and that Google could also use its advantage to build tools that could dominate the emerging artificial intelligence industry.
The Microsoft chief added that the search giant’s dominance means that publishers and advertisers shape their content to Google’s requirements, according to CNBC. This can make it harder for competitors like Microsoft’s Bing and others to make any significant impact on the market.
Google Antitrust lawsuit
The US Department of Justice and a coalition of state attorneys questioned Nadella as they are suing Google for allegedly violating antitrust laws by having a monopoly in the general search market. The prosecutors argue that Google is locking up distribution channels for general search engines through exclusive deals with browser and phone makers. Notably, Google pays Apple billions of dollars to keep Google as the default search engine on Apple devices like the iPhone.
“This is the most significant antitrust case brought by the DOJ since the late ’90s. Second, it’s not illegal to make money in the United States, and they’re not being sued for that reason. Sometimes you hear commentators say that, and that’s just wrong. It’s OK to be successful; it is also OK to be innovative. This is another one people sometimes say. They’re not being accused of being too innovative,” said economist Shane Greenstein to the Harvard Gazette in an interview, speaking about the Google antitrust case.
According to Greenstein, antitrust law is principally interested in two things in this case—has the firm achieved a level of success that can be characterised as a monopoly? Has the company used this leading position in ways that go against the principles of competition?
Earlier in the trial, Google had dismissed arguments that it is the world’s biggest search engine because of illegal practices, with a lawyer for the company saying that switching to another search engine “literally takes four taps,”
Apple and Google: “Co-opetition”
On the face of it, Apple and Google, two of the biggest technology companies in the world, are competitors. They compete on many fronts, with each having their own smartphones, laptops, digital map software, and more. But they also cooperate when it suits their collective interest.
Bruce Sewell, Apple’s general counsel from 2009 to 2017, gave a word for this partnership—”co-opetition.” The two companies are ferocious rivals in many industries, but at the same time, they cooperate where they need to.
Apple and its CEO, Tim Cook, have often trained their guns on Google, questioning the latter’s “surveillance” tactics that it uses to sell online advertisements. But at the same time, Apple takes between 8 and 12 billion dollars from Google to keep it as the default search engine on the iPhone and other devices, according to a 2020 New York Times report. The DOJ at the time said that nearly half of Google’s search traffic came from Apple devices.
