An Apple executive has defended the tech giant’s decision to make Google the default search engine on Apple’s iPhones and Macs, saying there is no “effective alternative.”
Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of services, said “nobody” can help phone and computer users search the web, testifying in the largest antitrust trial in a quarter century. As good as Google is.
this U.S. Department of Justice Accused that Google — a company whose name is synonymous with searching the web — stifles competition by paying Apple, Verizon and other technology companies to make its search engine the first one users see when they turn on their devices.
Google counters that it dominates the market because its search engine is better than its competitors, a position Cue supported in his testimony. Google also believes that users can switch to other search engines with just a few clicks anyway.
The antitrust case, the largest since the Justice Department went after Microsoft and its dominance of web browsers 25 years ago, was filed during the Trump administration in 2020.The trial begins on September 12 in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.
Mikhail Parakhin, Microsoft’s head of advertising and online services, testified on Tuesday that Google’s dominance relies on itself. The more searches Google processes, the more data it collects that can be used to improve future searches.
“The more data you have, the better the results will be,” he said, echoing a government argument.
Dominating the market also helps in other ways, Palahin said. For example, restaurants are more likely to ensure that their location and opening hours are accurate in results on leading search engines, while they are less likely to correct the information on smaller search engines.
He said experience shows that search engines need 20% market share to survive. Otherwise, “their quality will decrease rapidly and then they will disappear.”
Parashin also recounted his previous experience confronting Google when he was chief technology officer of Russian search engine Yandex. He said Yandex’s market share rose from 30% to 55% after Russian regulators required Android phones to let users choose a search engine instead of leaving Google in the default position.
Earlier in the proceedings, the government called behavioral economist, He testified that Google’s default state prevents users from switching search engines, in part because they are unwilling to change ingrained habits.Last week, the search engine founder Duck GoGoogle, which holds about 2.5% of the search market, confirmed that his company is struggling to compete because of revenue-sharing agreements it has with Apple and other companies.
U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta may not rule until early next year. If he decides Google violated the law, another trial will determine how to rein in its market power. The Mountain View, California-based company could be blocked from paying Apple and others to make Google the default search engine.
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