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Judge rules that Google ‘is a monopolist’ in US antitrust case
Laura Normand / The Verge
A federal judge ruled that Google violated US antitrust law by maintaining a monopoly in the search and advertising markets.
“After having carefully considered and weighed the witness testimony and evidence, the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” the court’s ruling, which you can read in full at the bottom of this story, reads. “It has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act.”
Multibillion-dollar Apple deal looms large in Google antitrust trial
Illustration: The Verge
Google has not one but two Department of Justice antitrust trials this year — and the first one, over Google Search, is finally coming to a close. On Thursday, lawyers showed up at the district court in Washington, DC, for the first of two days of closing arguments in the bench trial before Judge Amit Mehta.
This was the first tech anti-monopoly lawsuit the government had filed in two decades since US v. Microsoft. Its outcome directly affects one of the most valuable companies in the world. At this stage, the judge will only determine whether Google is liable for the antitrust charges brought against it. If so, there will be a separate proceeding to determine appropriate remedies. These could be court-ordered constraints on Google’s behavior or something as drastic as breaking up elements of its search business.
Google paid Apple $20 billion in 2022 to be Safari’s default search engine.
That’s according to Apple’s Eddy Cue in court documents filed ahead of closing arguments in the DoJ’s antitrust case against Google. It’s the first time the number has been confirmed, and marks an increase from the $18 billion reportedly paid in 2021. The filing also shows that Google’s 2020 payments were 17.5 percent of the Apple’s operating income.
A Google witness let slip just how much it pays Apple for Safari search
Illustration: The Verge
Google gives Apple a 36 percent cut of all search ad revenue that comes from Safari, according to University of Chicago professor Kevin Murphy. Google had fought to keep the number confidential, but Bloomberg reports that Murphy shared the figure while testifying in Google’s defense today at the Google antitrust trial.
Google has long paid to be the default search engine in Safari and other browsers like Firefox, spending $26.3 billion in 2021 alone for the privilege. $18 billion of that went to Apple, but the specifics of where the number came from remained secret until now. Google has been trying to keep such details under wraps as the trial goes on, but bits and pieces have seeped out anyway. According to Bloomberg, Google lawyer John Schmidtlein “visibly cringed when Murphy said the number.” Google declined to comment in an email to The Verge; Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
‘Android is a massive tracking device.’
That was the message from Apple in an internal strategy document from 2013. It has been revealed as part of the ongoing US v. Google antitrust trial. The document details Apple’s approach to privacy to differentiate from competitors like Google and Microsoft. Apple later went on to make privacy an even bigger part of its marketing pitch in iPhone commercials in 2019, with the “privacy matters” slogan.
A slide from a confidential Apple strategy document from 2013.Image: Apple
Here’s a rare look at Google’s most lucrative search queries
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Not all Google searches make Google money. Google often says that it only shows ads on about 20 percent of queries, the ones it calls “commercial queries.” You can probably guess what qualifies. “US president in 1836” is not something you type when you’re about to buy something; neither is “facebook” because all you’re looking for is Facebook. But if you type in “best new car 2023” or “cheap flights to London” there are a lot of advertisers that would like to be the first thing you see, and there’s a lot of money for Google to be made in the process.
This week, during the US v. Google antitrust trial, we got a rare glimpse at a closely guarded secret: which search terms make the most money. The list is only for the week of September 22nd, 2018, and it is the list of top queries ordered by revenue and nothing else. Still, we’ve never seen anything quite like this before, and the list was only made public after long deliberations from Judge Amit Mehta, who has, over the course of the trial, begun to push both sides to be more public with information and data like this.
Sundar Pichai argues in court that Google isn’t evil, it’s just a business
Photo: Getty Images
You might not expect an antitrust trial focused on Google’s overwhelming dominance in the year 2023 to spend a lot of time talking about Internet Explorer circa 2005. But you’d be wrong.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai spent a good chunk of Monday in a DC courtroom, testifying as part of the ongoing US v. Google antitrust trial. He stood at a podium instead of sitting (apparently he hurt his back), often with a magnifying glass in his hand, pushing his glasses up on his forehead as he squinted down at a binder full of exhibits. One exhibit proved particularly interesting: a letter from Google’s then-top lawyer David Drummond, sent on July 22nd, 2005, to Microsoft’s then-general counsel Brad Smith.
Google agreed to not promote Chrome to Safari users.
After a fun back-and-forth in the courtroom about the merits of redacting an exhibit during Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s testimony, we got a new tidbit of information. Google explicitly agreed, as part of its search deal with Apple, that it would not promote Chrome to Safari users — which it could do with banners in other Google apps, pop-ups, and the like, and does to many other services.
We’re slowly but surely learning how these deals get done, and it keeps getting juicier.
Google once asked Apple to preload its search app on iOS
Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge
In late 2018, Google CEO Sundar Pichai floated a bold idea to Apple CEO Tim Cook. Cook had just told Pichai he wanted to be “deep, deep partners, deeply connected where our services end and yours begin,” according to notes from the meeting. Pichai responded with a proposal: What if Apple preinstalled a Google Search app on every iOS device?
Exactly what that would have looked like — a full-blown app, a native widget, some reinvention of the Spotlight feature — is hard to say. But Pichai’s case to Apple, revealed during the CEO’s testimony in the US v. Google antitrust trial today, was simple. Google had seen that the Google app and widget were popular on Android and drove people to do more searching. More Google searches on Apple devices would mean more revenue for Apple, thanks to the two companies’ wildly lucrative search agreement. Everybody wins. Pichai even posited that Google would promise to maintain the built-in Google service for 20 years.
It’s Internet Explorer day in US v. Google!
We’re a bit over an hour into Sundar Pichai’s testimony in US v. Google, and we’ve spent a surprising amount of the morning in a time machine back to 2005.
That’s when Microsoft released Internet Explorer 7 (the browser a Pichai-led team would ultimately crush by launching Google Chrome). At the time, Google’s legal chief David Drummond sent Microsoft a letter that was very mad about search defaults. Drummond wanted a choice screen, and said Google was very worried about the anticompetitive nature of Microsoft prioritizing its own search engine.
Pichai is being asked a lot of questions that amount to, “this is now the argument against you, right?” So far, he’s sparring with it pretty well.
Hello again from DC District Court!
I’m here today to see Google CEO Sundar Pichai testify in the ongoing US v. Google antitrust trial. I just saw Pichai go through security, and there’s a lot of energy in the building to see how Google’s leader defends the company’s moves in search.
Things are set to start at 9:30, first with Google’s lawyers and then cross examination from the Justice Department. The line to get in is long, it’s weirdly warm in here, it’s gonna be a day, friends.
Google paid a whopping $26.3 billion in 2021 to be the default search engine everywhere
Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge
The US v. Google antitrust trial is about many things, but more than anything, it’s about the power of defaults. Even if it’s easy to switch browsers or platforms or search engines, the one that appears when you turn it on matters a lot. Google obviously agrees and has paid a staggering amount to make sure it is the default: testimony in the trial revealed that Google spent a total of $26.3 billion in 2021 to be the default search engine in multiple browsers, phones, and platforms.
That number, the sum total of all of Google’s search distribution deals, came out during the Justice Department’s cross-examination of Google’s search head, Prabhakar Raghavan. It was made public after a debate earlier in the week between the two sides and Judge Amit Mehta over whether the figure should be redacted. Mehta has begun to push for more openness in the trial in general, and this was one of the most significant new pieces of information to be shared openly.
“Chrome exists to serve Google search.”
The US v. Google antitrust case may be frustratingly shrouded in secrecy, but occasionally we get some fun nuggets. The quote above comes from an internal email sent by Google’s Jim Kolotouros, VP of Android Platform Partnerships. “Chrome exists to serve Google search,” he writes. “If it cannot do that because it is regulated to be set by the user, the value of users using Chrome goes to almost zero (for me).”
A screenshot of an internal Google email made public as part of the trial.Image: Department of Justice
Sundar Pichai will testify in US v. Google on Monday.
Pichai will be one of the first witnesses Google calls for its antitrust defense, which started officially today. He’ll help make the case that Google’s search success is due to its own innovation and missteps by competitors, not big deals with companies like Apple (which it allegedly paid $18 billion in 2021).
Google reportedly pays $18 billion a year to be Apple’s default search engine
Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge
Google pays Apple billions of dollars every year to be the default search engine in Safari on Macs, iPads, and iPhones. That, we’ve known for a long time. But exactly how many billions Google pays, what strings are attached to that money, and what might happen if it went away? Those have been the questions raised repeatedly in the ongoing US v. Google trial, and most of the numbers have been reserved for a closed courtroom.
But now, a New York Times report offers a specific figure: it says Google paid Apple “around $18 billion” in 2021. We’ve been hearing educated guesses and rumors during the trial as low as $10 billion and as high as $20 billion, so this number isn’t totally shocking. But it’s at the high end of expectations.
Read Sundar Pichai’s full email conversation about the Apple-Google deal.
After a slight delay, the Department of Justice has posted an exhibit from earlier this week in US v. Google, shedding light on the details of Apple and Google’s multibillion-dollar search deal.
The 2007 email thread features Sundar Pichai expressing his discomfort with making Google the sole search provider on Safari, while also revealing another potential option he disliked: fully different editions of Apple’s browser, one with Google and one with Yahoo as the chosen search engine.
The Google trial shows that Apple’s search deal is the most important contract in tech
Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge
“Would I be correct that, at least today, Apple has a lot of leverage in its negotiations with Google?”
Adam Severt, a Department of Justice attorney, asked that question to Google’s head of product partnerships, Joan Braddi, yesterday after a long tour of Braddi’s dealings with Apple over her two-decade-plus career at Google. The two were in a Washington, DC, courtroom, where for the last several weeks, the landmark US v. Google antitrust trial has litigated every corner of the search industry.
Back in 2007, Sundar Pichai thought Google shouldn’t be Safari’s only search option.
Now, his email to Larry Page and Sergey Brin (among others) has surfaced in the US v. Google trial, where the Department of Justice is taking aim at Google’s multibillion-dollar deal for prime placement in Apple’s browser. Google argues it’s simply the best choice, but in those early years, Pichai appeared ambivalent about the exclusivity deal regardless.
“I know we are insisting on default, but at the same time I think we should encourage them to have Yahoo as a choice in the pull down or some other easy option,” he wrote. “I don’t think it is a good user experience nor the optics is great for us to be the only provider in the browser.”
Today on The Vergecast: Big Tech goes to court.
The government is in the middle of a trial with Google, heading toward one with Amazon, and in general trying to change the way we think about monopolies. Also: Sam Bankman-Fried’s trial has begun, and it has already been eventful. All that, and an ebook debate, on the flagship podcast of the Sherman Act.
Satya Nadella tells a court that Bing is worse than Google — and Apple could fix it
Satya Nadella appears in DC for US v. Google.Image: Getty Images
Microsoft’s Bing search engine is not as good as Google. Believe it or not, it seems nobody — not even Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella — disputes that fact. But over hours of contentious testimony from Nadella during the landmark US v. Google antitrust trial, the reason for that inferiority became the question of the day.
Nadella, in a dark blue suit, took the stand early Monday morning after a few minutes of scheduling updates and a delay long enough that Judge Amit Mehta asked jokingly, “Mr. Nadella didn’t go back to Seattle, did he?” But eventually, questioning began from Adam Severt, a lawyer at the Department of Justice.
An hour-long history lesson about Microsoft’s many failures in mobile.
A huge part of Google’s defense in US v. Google is that it’s not illegal to build a great product. And to prove that that’s all that’s happening here, Google lawyer John Schmidtlein has spent the last 60 minutes reminding Satya Nadella of Microsoft’s decades of bad decisions about Internet Explorer, Live Search, Windows Phone, and all its other browser and mobile screwups. He even has an internal poll that is headlined: “Our Mobile Story Sucks.”
Nadella is mostly just responding “that sounds right” and “correct.” He’s not arguing that Bing is better than Google — he’s arguing that it’s impossible to be better than Google. And Schmidtlein says no, it’s just that Bing sucks. And that’s your fault, not ours.
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