In a landmark legal battle, the United States has concluded its antitrust case against Google, bringing to an end a historic trial that has captured the attention of tech giants and regulators alike.
The trial, which lasted for several months, centered around allegations of Google’s anti-competitive practices in the search engine and online advertising markets.
The U.S. government went back to basics in arguments against Alphabet’s Google on Thursday, wrapping up the evidentiary phase of a court battle in which it has accused the online search leader of breaking antitrust law with its tactics.
In the trial, which started on Sept. 12 and is widely expected to end on Thursday, the Justice Department is seeking to prove that Google is a monopolist and illegally abused its power to favor its bottom line.
“When there’s not a competitive threat, they’re not making that investment. And quality is lower,” Whinston said under questioning from Adam Severt of the Justice Department, one of the lawyers who signed the original 2020 complaint against Google.
Whinston disagreed with Google’s arguments that it had to compete with Microsoft to be exclusively pre-installed on smartphones. Google’s payments to Apple and others, totaling $26.3 billion in 2021, are essentially monopoly profits paid to distributors, he said. “Google made a lot of profit on these contracts.”
Alphabet reported a net profit of $19.69 billion for July to September, up from $13.91 billion in the year-ago period. Revenue totaled $76.69 billion for the quarter.
