The decide overseeing a landmark U.S. antitrust problem to Google tried to poke holes in either side’ circumstances throughout closing arguments Thursday, as he weighs a ruling that might reshape the expertise trade.
Decide Amit P. Mehta was presiding over the primary day of closing arguments in probably the most consequential tech antitrust case for the reason that U.S. authorities sued Microsoft within the late Nineteen Nineties. The Justice Division has sued Google, accusing it of illegally shoring up a monopoly in on-line search. Google has denied the claims.
On Thursday, Decide Mehta questioned the federal government’s argument that Google’s dominance had harm the standard of the expertise for trying to find info on-line. However he additionally pushed Google to defend its central argument that it isn’t a monopoly as a result of customers use different firms like Amazon to seek for procuring objects and TikTok to seek for music clips.
“Actually I don’t suppose the typical particular person would say, ‘Google and Amazon are the identical factor,’” Decide Mehta stated.
His ruling — anticipated within the coming weeks or months — will assist set a precedent for a collection of presidency challenges to tech giants’ measurement and energy. Federal regulators have additionally filed antitrust lawsuits towards Apple, Amazon and Meta, and a second case towards Google over internet advertising.
Earlier than the beginning of closing arguments in a U.S. District Court docket for the District of Columbia courtroom, Jonathan Kanter, head of the Justice Division’s antitrust division, approached Kent Walker, president of world affairs at Google, to talk.
Decide Mehta started proceedings by questioning Kenneth Dintzer, the Justice Division’s lead courtroom lawyer for the trial, about innovation in search.
The federal government has argued {that a} lack of competitors within the on-line search enterprise — through which, it says, virtually 90 p.c of all searches are carried out with Google — means Google doesn’t must spend money on the standard of its search expertise. However Decide Mehta informed Mr. Dintzer that it might be laborious to “dispute that search in the present day appears to be like loads completely different than it did 10 to fifteen years in the past” and that a few of that change was because of Google’s work.
“It appears to me a tough street so that you can go down for me to conclude that Google hasn’t innovated sufficient,” Decide Mehta stated.
The Justice Division additionally argued that as a result of Google had a monopoly and didn’t face sturdy competitors, it hadn’t put privateness protections into its search engine. The decide interrupted Mr. Dintzer to say there could also be a “trade-off” for privateness versus the standard of search. Decide Mehta added that his problem was learn how to measure if Google had accomplished sufficient to guard the privateness of customers.
Decide Mehta prodded Google’s lead litigator, John E. Schmidtlein, on the argument that firms like Amazon and ESPN are true rivals to its search engine. He famous that if he wished to know who the shortstop for the Baltimore Orioles was in 1983, he would almost certainly use Google.
