WashingtonCNN –
Google CEO Sundar Pichai took the stand Monday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to defend the search engine giant in the biggest tech antitrust case since the Microsoft case in the 1990s. This marked a culmination in the US government’s weeks-long effort to prevent it from proving that Google has illegally monopolized the online search market.
Pichai, whom Google called a star witness, began his testimony with an account of his journey from Chennai, India, to Google and his path to becoming the tech company’s CEO in 2015.
Standing at a podium in a dark suit, white shirt and gray tie, Pichai described how Google’s investments in Chrome, its proprietary web browser, accelerated users’ experiences on popular websites and led them to conduct more Google searches .
The history lesson is central to Google’s defense that the company’s search dominance is because people prefer Google because it is the best, not because it behaved illegally to gain and maintain a monopoly .
By seamlessly integrating Google’s search engine into the Chrome browser and offering users a minimalist design that created more space for search results and web content within a browser window, Google believed it would increase search usage, Pichai testified.
“The connection was pretty clear to see,” Pichai said before Google lawyer John Schmidtlein presented an internal email from 2010 that showed research showed that users who switched from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer used Google 48% more -Conducted searches. Users of Mozilla’s Firefox browser who switched to Chrome conducted 27% more searches on Google, the email said.
Pichai’s statement represents Google’s attempt to refute claims from rivals, including Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who testified last month that Google has thwarted search competition and risks dominating the artificial intelligence sector by expanding its large language models search query data he controls.
The U.S. government’s case against Google focuses on the company’s network of contracts that make its search engine the default on millions of devices and browsers around the world. Google has paid Apple more than an estimated $10 billion a year to be the standard for Apple devices and software. Google paid $26.3 billion in 2021 to enter into standard agreements with its partners worldwide, according to a slide presented in the trial last week.
Pichai acknowledged that Google pays Apple more money for standard search payments than it pays any Android phone maker for search distribution, but “a big part of the difference” is that Google has separate contracts with Android smartphone makers and telecommunications providers, while Apple does not “do both [original equipment manufacturer] and they have control over their telecommunications channels,” which would make Apple’s number appear larger, he testified.
A central question during the trial was why Google felt it appropriate to pay Apple and other search resellers such large sums when it is as easy as Google claims for users to switch search providers.
When asked this question directly by Google’s own lawyers, Pichai didn’t shy away from acknowledging a connection between a search engine’s default status and its growth.
“If we make it standard,” he said, “we know it would lead to increased usage of our products and services.” There is clearly value in that, and that’s exactly what we wanted to achieve with Google’s distribution deals.
As Google renegotiated its lucrative and notoriously opaque contract with Apple over the years – in 2016 and again in 2021 – Google limited the way Apple could handle the search queries its users entered into its products, Pichai testified. Because Apple chooses which searches it sends to Google and which searches it tries to answer through Apple’s own search technology, Google feared that Apple might decide to send some searches to Amazon, for example.
“We wanted to make sure that when we think about a longer-term deal, the concept of default is implemented in a similar way in the future,” Pichai said, reflecting on his negotiations with Apple service chief Eddy Cue in 2016.
Later in Pichai’s testimony, the Justice Department attempted to draw contrasts between Google’s strong desire to be the default search engine for millions of Internet users and its vocal objections to Microsoft’s apparent desire to make Bing the effective default search engine in Internet Explorer.
This year, Google sent Microsoft a lengthy letter outlining concerns about potential competition issues raised by Microsoft’s behavior, according to an exhibit presented in court.
“We are deeply concerned that Microsoft’s actions could harm the competitive process,” Google wrote at the time, reminding Microsoft of its own run-ins with antitrust regulators in the past.
On Monday, a U.S. government lawyer asked Pichai to acknowledge that the letter and other examples prove that Google believes search preferences are extremely valuable – both financially and in terms of improving users’ search behavior in general.
However, Pichai denied any possible parallels between the two situations, describing Google’s offers as standard advertising agreements. He suggested that Microsoft’s approach raised concerns because users were not adequately informed about the option to choose a different search provider. Instead, Internet Explorer would simply import a user’s previous settings, and if the user had not made a selection, Bing would default.
Government lawyers sought to prove that Google fears Apple becoming more involved in search, pointing to a 2019 email in which Pichai asked a subordinate to email him every time a Employees from Google’s search business left to work for Apple.
That specific request came as Pichai became aware of several employee departures and the recruiting efforts of John Giannandrea, a former Google search executive who oversaw search efforts at Apple (and also testified in the trial). Apple has testified that it has always viewed Google as the best search engine for its users, even as it has considered alternatives such as partnering with Microsoft on search or even purchasing Bing.
In the afternoon, Pichai admitted in court: “There were moments when people at Google had concerns about Apple as a potential competitor,” without giving a specific time frame.
Referring to the 2019 email exchange, Pichai testified that his motion – which also called for a monthly report of “all losses.” [of talent] to key competitors” – was an attempt to respond to calls for help from Google’s search team amid broader fears about talent loss.
Pichai added wryly that he did not believe he ever received any of the reports he requested.
Pichai bristled at suggestions from a lawyer representing a group of US states that Google may have paid Apple in part to stop the company from entering the search market. Instead, he said that Google kept extending the Apple agreement because the agreement was, in and of itself, beneficial to Google’s search volume and advertising revenue, as well as to Apple users.
The relationship between Apple and Google hasn’t always been entirely smooth, Pichai testified. In December 2018, Pichai met with Apple CEO Tim Cook. (Pichai said that as part of the Apple agreement, he and Cook meet approximately annually to discuss their deal.) On the agenda: Cook’s concerns that Apple’s revenue growth associated with the deal won’t keep pace with Google’s .
According to a Google summary of the nearly two-hour meeting revealed Monday, Apple wanted to know what made the difference.
Google essentially told Apple at the meeting that any discrepancies were likely due to Apple’s own errors in search and were not Google’s fault.
“Google has no control over the amount or type of traffic Safari receives; “This is Apple,” Google argued in the meeting, the summary says.
Although both companies continued to view the search agreement as mutually beneficial and Cook seemed “very motivated to work on a good experience for our mutual users,” Pichai testified, the meeting was also “tense” at times and some participants were ” nervous”. ” addresses this.
To smooth things over, Pichai suggested during the meeting the development of a dedicated Google app or widget that would be pre-installed on Apple’s iOS and allow users to access Google Search directly from their home screens.
Cook “listened but didn’t respond specifically other than noting that we had different strengths,” the Google summary says.
U.S. prosecutors also clashed with Pichai over Google’s handling of internal communications that it knew could be included in future litigation. In a lengthy exchange, the Justice Department pressed Pichai to explain a company policy that, until February of this year, resulted in employee chat messages older than 24 hours being automatically deleted. The practice has been repeatedly called out by Google critics as allegedly evasive.
Google’s chat policies were set by the company’s legal department in 2008, before he became CEO, Pichai told a prosecutor. The lawyer pointed out that Pichai made no effort to change policy when he became CEO; Pichai agreed, saying it was “not a change that I noticed.”
At one point, the DOJ showed a chat log from 2021 involving Pichai and his communications assistant in which he asked to disable chat history before deleting that request nine seconds later.
Pichai said he rarely, if ever, requests that chat history be deactivated, and in this case the chat conversation may have involved personal information related to a public event related to Google’s cloud business, for which he had prepared.