October 31, 2023: Google CEO Sundai Pichai U.S. Attorney General Joe Pichai takes the stand to give long-awaited testimony about the relationship between his company and Apple. He gave some details about Google’s negotiations with Apple over a contract that made Google the default search engine on Apple’s iPhones, iPads and Macs. Google has paid billions for the privilege of being the default search engine on Apple products, and the relationship is a key part of the case — which was underscored by the Justice Department’s cross-examination of Pichai, during which he admitted that default search status is a major driver of market share.
October 18, 2023: Google begins its defense by calling Paul Nayak, vice president of search, as its first witness. Nayak downplays the scale of his testimony, stressing that machine intelligenceIT infrastructure and a team of 16,000 people monitoring search results are crucial to maintaining quality of service. Justice Department witnesses, including DuckDuckGo Chief Executive Gabriel Weinberg and Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella, had testified that Google maintains an edge over its competitors thanks to an ever-growing amount of data — a result of its status as the default search engine, which is maintained through exclusive contracts and billions of dollars in payments to Apple, Samsung and other companies. This data gives Google an advantage when it comes to refining search engine results, they said.
October 3, 2023: As a witness for the prosecution in the antitrust trial against Google, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella warns that Google's monopoly profits could ensnare publishers as AI-enabled search arrives. Nadella said it was nearly impossible to compete with Google, given the search leader's huge competitive advantage in collecting and analyzing user data. He also warned that Google, with its huge profits and dominance of the search market, was poised to expand its monopoly power in a new era in which artificial intelligence technologies will drive the search business.
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