(Washington) Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said Monday that the dominance of Google’s online search engine made it very difficult for rivals to emerge, during a hearing before a U.S. judge tasked with deciding whether Google should success to its popularity or illegal anti-competitive practices.
“You can say that [Google] is popular, but for me it is mostly dominant,” Mr. Nadella told a lawyer for the internet giant during a tense cross-examination.
The boss was called to testify in Washington, as part of the historic trial which opened on September 12 against Google (a subsidiary of Alphabet).
The American government accuses the Californian group of having built its empire thanks to illegal exclusivity contracts with companies such as Samsung and Apple, so that its tool is installed by default on their devices and services, and thus prevent any alternative. ’emerge.
It is the largest antitrust lawsuit filed in the United States against a major technology company since that against Microsoft and its Windows operating system more than 20 years ago.
Since 2009, Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, has been trying to gain market share. Mr. Nadella said he believed he could never compete with Google, largely because of its deals with Apple.
PHOTO DON RYAN, ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES
Google’s lawyers argue that users can easily switch applications, but this is a “bogus” argument, according to the head of the IT group.
“It would be a game changer [pour Bing] to be a default tool on Safari,” Apple’s browser, he added.
But Apple rejected Microsoft’s advances. The iPhone maker receives billions of dollars from Google each year, thanks to a generous revenue-sharing deal, previous testimony has revealed.
Satya Nadella also insisted on another argument of the prosecution: the collection of data by Google created a network effect which reinforced its power as a tool for advertisers and for users.
In this context, “it becomes even more difficult to break through when you don’t have market share,” he said.
Microsoft continued to invest in Bing, hoping for a possible “paradigm shift” or government intervention against Google.
At the start of the year, the company even launched a Bing boosted with generative AI (artificial intelligence), following the success of ChatGPT, the OpenAI interface, a start-up largely funded by Microsoft.
But despite a certain “exuberance” at the beginning, Mr. Nadella said he no longer believes that this new technology will challenge Google’s domination of online search.