A senior Apple official, called to the witness stand on Tuesday to testify in the trial against Google, assured that, in his opinion, the famous search engine is the best product for users of its smartphones.
• Also read: Historic trial against Google opens in the USA
On September 12th, a historic trial opened against the Internet giant, which is accused of abuse of a dominant market position by the American government.
According to the Justice Department, Google built its empire through illegal exclusive deals with companies like Samsung, Apple and Mozilla to install the tool by default on their devices and services, preventing an alternative from emerging.
“I don’t think there’s anyone as good at online search as Google,” Eddy Cue, an Apple vice president, said in court.
“At that time there was no viable alternative to Google. And we never really thought about choosing someone else,” he added.
Mr. Cue was referring to a series of deals that began in 2002: Google paid Apple billions of dollars to secure a top spot in its electronic devices.
The deal was updated in 2016 so that the iPhone maker would receive a larger share of Google’s advertising revenue from its search engine through Safari, Apple’s Internet browser.
Mr. Cue’s testimony was only briefly public before continuing behind closed doors amid concerns from companies about sharing sensitive data.
Google has 10 weeks of hearings to convince federal Judge Amit Mehta that the government’s allegations are without merit.
It is the first time U.S. prosecutors have taken direct action against a major technology company since Microsoft was targeted over the dominance of its Windows operating system more than two decades ago.
The process is intended to help determine whether Google owes the success of its search engine to its performance or to anti-competitive practices.
The hearings have already revealed that Google pays Apple and other companies $10 billion every year to secure its status as the default search engine on mobile phones and web browsers.