A marathon trial opens Tuesday between the United States and Google, to decide whether the technology giant abused the dominant position of its flagship product, which has become synonymous with online searches.
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At the heart of this historic trial, twenty years after similar suits against Microsoft, is the following question: Does Google owe the success of its search engine to its performance or to anticompetitive practices?
According to the US government, Google built its empire through illegal contracts with companies such as Samsung, Apple and Firefox to have its tool installed by default on their smartphones and services.
This domination of the internet and therefore of digital advertising has allowed Alphabet, Google’s parent company, to become one of the richest companies in the world.
During 10 weeks of hearings from around a hundred witnesses in a court in Washington, the Californian company will try to persuade federal judge Amit Mehta that the Justice Department’s accusations are unfounded.
“Our success is deserved,” said Kent Walker, general counsel of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, in an official statement.
“People don’t use Google because they have no choice but because they want to. It is easy to change the default search engine, we are no longer in the era of modems and CD-ROMs,” he added.
“Darling of Silicon Valley”
It is the most important competition law suit brought against a major technology company since the same authority attacked Microsoft over the dominance of the Windows operating system.
Launched in 1998, Washington’s lawsuit against Microsoft ended with a settlement in 2001, after an appeals court overturned a decision ordering the company to be split up.
At the time, Google was “the darling of Silicon Valley as a pugnacious start-up that offered an innovative way to search the nascent Internet,” the department said in its complaint. “That Google is long gone.”
Dozens of American states, led by Colorado, have also joined the battle. Although the judge rejected some of their arguments before trial – including accusing Google of illegally de-ranking sites such as Yelp and Expedia.
The search engine represents 90% of this market in the United States and worldwide, in particular thanks to searches on smartphones, mainly iPhones (Apple) and phones operated by Android (Google).
Revenue from advertising based on search results represents nearly 60% of the group’s revenues, far ahead of its other branches, from YouTube to Android.
Its rivals, like Bing (Microsoft) and DuckDuckGo, have never managed to gain much traction.
Call
Google is at risk. If in a few months Amit Mehta decides in favor of the United States, the group risks being forced to separate from certain activities to force it to change its methods.
In Europe, it has already been fined more than €8.2 billion for various competition law violations, although some of these decisions are under appeal.
The stakes are also high for Joe Biden’s government. The lawsuits were launched in 2020 by Donald Trump’s administration, but the Democratic president has made a point of challenging the tech giants, without much effect so far.
In July, the American competition authority, the FTC, suspended its procedure to block the acquisition of video game publisher Activision Blizzard by Microsoft, after a series of legal setbacks.
Whatever the trial’s verdict, “it’s not over until there’s an appeal,” said John Lopatka, a law professor at Penn State’s School of Law.
“So those who want to regulate tech should not despair if the government ever loses this round. But it would be a significant defeat,” he said.
In January, the Justice Department filed another complaint against Google over its advertising business. The trial could take place next year.