The trial being held these weeks in Washington against Google for the alleged abuse of its dominant position in the search engine market is the most important monopoly case in two decades. In the previous one, dating back to 1998, Microsoft was being judged, while Google had just been born. It’s been 25 years. This Monday, the current head of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, appeared in a federal court in Washington as a victim and witness for the prosecution against Google. The manager has declared that Google’s monopolistic behavior has prevented its own search engine, Bing, from gaining a greater market share.
Wearing a navy blue suit, white shirt and blue patterned tie, more formal attire than usual, the Microsoft executive testified in the crowded federal courtroom in Washington where the case is being tried for more than three hours in the third week. of the trial and as a witness for the Department of Justice, the prosecution. Previous statements by witnesses, including Apple executives, had been made behind closed doors, alleging the confidentiality of the information to be provided. On this occasion the testimony has been public.
Nadella has highlighted Google’s multimillion-dollar deals to be the default search engine on phones, tablets and computers from Apple and other companies. Microsoft believes that with them it has abused its dominant position and prevented its rivals from growing. With his testimony, Nadella reinforces one of the key arguments of the Justice Department’s indictment against Google.
Google has maintained during the process, since the initial allegations, that it is very easy to change the default search engine, but that users do not do it because of Google’s quality, not because it is complicated. The accusation maintains that in practice users do not change the default search engine and that although it is easy for someone who knows how to do it, many users would not even know where to start to do it.
Nadella’s testimony has been along those lines. He has argued that users in practice do not have many options when it comes to changing the default browsers on mobile phones and computers, harming rivals such as Microsoft’s Bing. Furthermore, she has stressed that the user becomes accustomed to the default search engine and that creates habits that are difficult to combat. “We are one of the alternatives, but not the default,” she stressed, in a statement reported by AP.
Google’s monopoly position, he said, creates “a vicious circle” in which the company has a 90% market share and can dedicate its income to improving its search engine and maintaining its monopolistic position with agreements like these. He has described the agreement between Google and Apple as oligopolistic.
The Microsoft manager’s statement has also served to attack another of Google’s lines of defense. The company argues that there are more ways than ever to search for information: “You can search for recommendations on TikTok, Reddit or Instagram, find music and podcasts on Spotify, ask a question on ChatGPT or shop on Amazon. In fact, more than 60% of Americans start searching for products on Amazon,” explained one of its managers a few weeks ago.
Nadella has assured that he denied that the adoption of artificial intelligence by Bing has caused drastic changes in its market share and that enthusiastic statements about its effect were typical of someone who goes from a share of 3% to 3.5%, but nothing too relevant. She has also denied that artificial intelligence or more specialized search engines like Amazon or social media have significantly changed the market in which Microsoft competes with Google.
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