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Google called up an expert to the stand, to defend its actions during the antitrust trial in the US. The expert in question is Kevin Murphy, who teaches at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
An expert appeared at court to defend Google in the US antitrust trial
He was called up to the stand, and argued in favor of Google. He said that Apple and others played Google and Microsoft off against each other, with a clear purpose… to get considerable payouts from Google.
As a reminder, Microsoft has its Bing search engine, which is a competitor to Google. Mr. Murphy defended Google’s payments, and even said that the payments to device markers (and others) were often passed through to users in the form of cheaper plans, or phones.
Kevin Murphy said that Microsoft had basically all pre-installed browser defaults in the early 2010s, but that it didn’t mean anything for the company. Why? Because Bing got just 15% of search queries at the time.
He also added that changing default presets on devices may be complex for some, but that they usually install a different browser, or something of the sort. We don’t really see how that’s relevant to anything, but there you have it.
The Justice Department & Google have been at it for over two months now
Now, as a reminder, the Justice Department is suing Google, and alleges that the company took advantage of its huge resources to stay at the top… in an anti-competitive manner. The DOJ accused Google of paying billions ($26.3 billion) in 2021 to ensure that it keeps its market share as high as it was.
The trial kicked off on September 12, and was projected to last for two months. We’re already past that time, so this could be the last week of trial, actually.
A lot of details did surface, even though many of them were kept under the rug. This was a semi-private trial, kind of… and it still is.