The US Department of Justice sued Google’s advertising business.
Today’s complaint alleges that Google has used anticompetitive, exclusionary,
and unlawful conduct to eliminate or severely diminish any threat to its
dominance over digital advertising technologies.
I don’t believe there have been any major antitrust cases since Microsoft in the late 1990s. While the laws haven’t changed, prosecutors don’t have the courage to break up large monopolies anymore.
It sounds like the trial begins today.
The Justice Department contends Google’s claim that it dominates the market by supplying the best search engine is a canard. They allege Google protects its franchise through a form of payola, shelling out billions of dollars annually to be the default search engine on the iPhone and web browser such as Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox.
Regulators also allege Google has illegally rigged the market in its favor by requiring its search engine to be bundled with its Android software for smartphones if the device manufacturers want full access to the Android app store.
…
The tactics have created a toxic situation allowing Google to cram more ads at the top of its search results, increasing its profits and Alphabet’s stock price, according to the Justice Department.
I hope DOJ wins. From my point of view the evidence against Alphabet and Google is overwhelming. My worry is that DOJ will win and then chicken out when it comes to settlement and fail to break up Alpha/Google.
The Matt Stoller (BIG)-adjacent newsletter Big Tech on Trial is what I’m using as my day-to-day way of keeping on top of it, in case that’s of use.
Thanks for that link.
From What makes Google great? - by Yosef Weitzman
Rangel provided the court with an introduction to what he said were several fundamental behavioral-economic principles. He shared multiple conclusions from his expert report including that “search engine defaults generate a sizeable and robust bias towards the default.” He also walked through a demonstration he made of how many steps it took to change the Android Google search widget to a different search engine: 10 to be exact. And he pointed out that those 10 steps required a user to actually know exactly what the 10 steps for changing the default widget were.
Is this talking about the search bar present on the bottom of the standard Android OS? On GrapheneOS, I don’t have a search engine “widget”. Or is this talking about Google Chrome?
If it’s talking about the search widget, I am honestly surprised Google allows you to change it! Microsoft doesn’t allow you to change the start menu search engine; they don’t even let you turn it off.
Also, I subscribed via Email, but there’s an RSS feed here: <![CDATA[Big Tech on Trial]]>
(Vivaldi makes it very easy to find hidden RSS Feeds…and displays XML feeds in a nice way…so much to that browser)
I’ve been running a thread on Twitter for three days, starting the intriguing redactions in the pre-trial briefs. I will aim to summarise main things from each day, linking to details from those mentioned above and more I know of, or come across.
Just covered yesterday (Day 2) and picked out three major highlights including this significant, if unsurprising, admission:
I understand there are (were) four antitrust cases against Google in the US. First there is the one in court now, which is about search and search advertising. Until recently this covered both general and vertical search, but I believe the judge dismissed the vertical search part pre-trial. This case is brought by the DoJ and 14 states.
The other three cases are:
Will you also be posting a summary on the Mojeek blog or re-posting it to Mastodon? I’ve never been able to navigate X…when I click on the link to the “thread”, I can only see one post. I don’t have an X account, so it might be that X refuses to show me threads without an account? When I click the arrow to go back, which I assume will take me to your profile, it just takes me to the main page and asks me to create an account.
It boggles my mind how the people responsible for Bootstrap (which is great) have created such a confusing site. I’ve found Mastodon a little confusing but I don’t get lost as easily.
Edit: Yes, X is definitely restricting users without an account.
(The Power of Defaults - by Yosef Weitzman)
Judge Mehta asked Rangel something to the effect of how Rangel would analyze consumer harm with respect to a product that doesn’t charge. This is at least the second time Judge Mehta has asked a question relating to the fact that Google search is free to users; as I noted in my recap of Day 1, Judge Mehta asked Schmidtlein during Google’s opening statement how he should define a market when there is no price for the product.
Cory Doctorow talks about this a lot in The Internet Con. It’s the idea that monopolies should only be broken up if prices increase. But Doctorow points out that Antitrust was never about price; it was about the heavy concentration of power in one company’s hands.
Good question. I will probably do a blog post at some point. I’m using Twitter (refuse to call it X) as that’s where most of the knowledgable tech policy folks still hang out and post, and quite a few follow me. Mastodon is a decent suggestion. But I’ll probably just post some things here, more than using that.
On that note, here is a very good summary of the first week: Breaking down US v. Google’s first week of antitrust arguments - The Verge
I don’t have an account on that platform (whatever it wants to call itself 
) and I don’t see any reason to get one now, so I’ll wait for the Mojeek blog post. We certainly live in interesting times. The Verge article is a good second perspective to have in addition to the source @Josh posted.
Separately, he argued that Google’s default search deals give web browsers much-needed revenue
That is true! Google are a generous bunch, aren’t they?
and that its Android agreements help create a viable mobile competitor to iOS.
Uhh—
Google getting more antitrust scrutiny is a good thing for Microsoft, but it’s almost impressive what a punching bag Bing has become in this trial.
At least they aren’t talking about cutting off Microsoft’s air supply
Plenty of interesting and revealing data was coming out, but Google have now managed to get the court exhibits taken down.
Google Emails, Memos Hidden From Web as DOJ Caves to Pressure (paywalled).
One of these brave reporters, Lean Nylen, from Bloomberg stood up in the court gallery to object, and yesrday brought in a First Amendment lawyer argue the case. But the court retreated to discuss the matter in secret.
The article above has links to all exhibits that were published by the DOJ before it took them down.
I’m linking to NY Post because Bloomberg’s article is paywalled.
Duckduckgo CEO takes the stand and talks about how hard it is to change the default search engine on Google Chrome. I can’t tell if there was more to this testimony, but on the face of it, I don’t find it very credible.
Here is Mojeek’s article on how to change your default search engine (thanks for updating it recently!): Add Mojeek To your Chrome Android
There is an extra step in here because Mojeek is not on the default list of Search Engines for Chrome on Android. Duckduckgo has it easier because it’s already on the default list; the user doesn’t even need to search to have Chrome parse the OpenSearch document.
Compare Google Chrome to Safari. With Safari on iOS, you can’t change your search engine to Mojeek because it isn’t in the list of default search engines, and there is no way to add a search engine that isn’t in that list.
I submitted a bug for the Chromium Project asking for easier ways to make one-time searches with another search engine a few months ago (I use a browser downstream from Chromium on Android), and was told to expect this new functionality later this year by a Google employee. We’ll see if that comes to fruition, but it’s telling that they were willing to implement it.
That’s my perspective on all this. I don’t think it’s a particularly credible criticism, and I think it undermines all the other criticism you could levy at Google.
As we’ve said all along, and you have pointed out, the no custom search engine in Safari is biggest barrier to monopoly move. DuckDuckGo don’t complain about that as they are listed; they are themselves better protected from Mojeeek, Kagi, Startpage, and all but Ecosia, Bing, and Google in most countries.
The main issue in this trial is the Apple-Google duopoly, and the Safari block is at the heart of that. Apple are in court starting today, so we will see what might come out; how much depending on whether the judge refinds his backbone.
That was an interesting article, thank you. I never considered that Google and Apple might have such an amenable relationship. Admittedly, I don’t pay much attention to phones…
This is a particularly damning statement:
“Our vision is that we work as if we are one company,” a senior Apple employee wrote a Google counterpart in a 2018 email, cited in the Justice Department complaint.
“Google’s 2022 payment was equivalent to a third of Google’s entire net income and increased Apple’s by a full 25%. Moreover, Google’s payments to Apple fund more than three quarter’s of the later company’s R&D expense.” Big Tech’s Biggest Bets (Or What It Takes to Build a Billion-User Platform) — MatthewBall.co
The take from Matt Stoller after two weeks. This is not at all playing out like it did for Microsoft in 1998.
Wired had the perspective that news outlets aren’t willing to dedicate reporters to the trial. That seems hard to believe since the Microsoft trial was covered so thoroughly.
… few news outlets can dedicate a reporter to a courtroom seat for eight hours a day for the duration. Most reporters focused on Google are based in San Francisco. [The] legal and regulatory publications that can commit charge hundreds of dollars for content subscriptions. Any antitrust junkie—or frustrated Google Search user—wanting an affordable readout from the sparsely attended, era-defining trial, must rely on Weitzman, or a handful of others firing off tweets, skeets, and Substacks.
