Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said Monday that online search engine Google’s dominance makes it very difficult for rivals to prevail, during a hearing before a U.S. judge who will decide whether Google owes its success to its popularity or illegal anti-competitive practices owes.
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“You can say (Google) is popular, but to me it’s mostly dominant,” Mr. Nadella told a lawyer for the internet giant during tense cross-examination.
The boss was called to testify in Washington as part of the historic trial that opened on September 12th against Google, which is accused of abuse of a dominant market position by the American government.
According to the Justice Department, the Californian company built its empire through illegal exclusive contracts with companies like Samsung, Apple and Mozilla, installing its tool by default on their devices and services, preventing any alternative from emerging.
It is the largest antitrust lawsuit filed in the United States against a major technology company since the lawsuit against Microsoft and its Windows operating system more than twenty years ago.
Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, has been trying to gain market share since 2009. Mr. Nadella said he believes he will never be able to compete with Google, largely because of its deals with Apple.
Google’s lawyers argue that users can easily switch between applications, but that is a “false” argument, according to the IT company’s boss.
“Even more vicious circle”
“It would be a game changer (for Bing) to be a default tool in Safari,” he added.
But Apple rejected Microsoft’s advances. The iPhone maker receives billions of dollars from Google every year thanks to a generous revenue-sharing agreement, according to previous statements.
Satya Nadella also emphasized another argument of the prosecution: Google’s data collection created a network effect that strengthened its power as a tool for advertisers and users.
In this context, “if you don’t have market share, it becomes even harder to break through,” he said.
Microsoft continued to invest in Bing, hoping for a possible “paradigm shift” or government intervention against Google.
Earlier this year, the company even launched a generative AI (artificial intelligence) Bing, following the success of ChatGPT, the interface from OpenAI, a startup largely funded by Microsoft.
But despite some initial “exuberance,” Mr. Nadella said he no longer believes this new technology will challenge Google’s dominance in online search.
The manager assured that he now fears that Google will exploit its dominant position to put pressure on content providers essential to the training of generative AI models.
“Despite my enthusiasm, I fear this vicious cycle will only get worse,” Mr. Nadella said.