Google is paying out billions of dollars a year to Apple, Samsung, and other leading tech companies to illegally maintain its search engine dominance, according to the US Justice Department.
These claims are at the centre of a current antitrust lawsuit against parent company Alphabet, which alleges it uses such illegal tactics to maintain its monopoly in the search engine field. The case is being heard in Washington.
“Google invests billions in defaults, knowing people won’t change them,” DOJ attorney Kenneth Dintzer told Judge Amit Mehta. “They are buying default exclusivity because defaults matter a lot.”
Dintzer says Google pays “enormous numbers” to each of these companies to appear as the default search engine on their various devices.
“Default exclusivity allows Google to systemically deny rivals’ data,” he said.
Google’s attorney John Schmidtlein claims that the case is focusing too narrowly on search engine rivals without taking into account the dominance of other platforms where people search for information.
“You don’t have to go to Google to shop on Amazon,” Schmidtlein said. “You don’t have to go to Google to buy plane tickets on Expedia.”
“The fact that Google doesn’t face the same competition on every query doesn’t mean the company doesn’t face tough competition.”
Schmidtlein also argued that such deals had been in place for two decades, and are vital in funding non-profit such as Mozilla, creators of popular browser Firefox.
“The reason they partner with Google isn’t because they had to; it’s because they want to,” he pointed out, saying Google’s “extraordinary success” was due to providing something “incredibly valuable.”
“Competition on the merits is not unlawful.”
