US judge questions DOJ, Google in antitrust trial

WASHINGTON: A US judge on Thursday pushed against the central pleas of both US govt and Google lawyers as he heard closing arguments at a landmark antitrust trial. Federal judge Amit Mehta, whose decision is not expected until later in the year, raised his questions during two days of hearings that come six months after the conclusion of testimony.
The case is the first of five major lawsuits by the US govt to reach trial, with Meta, Amazon, Apple and a separate case against Google also heading for federal court.The trial is the first time the US department of justice (DoJ) has faced a big tech company in court since Microsoft was targeted more than two decades ago over the dominance of its Windows operating system. At the heart of the govt’s case is the massive payments made by Google to Apple and other firms to keep its search engine as the default on iPhones, web browsers and other products. In 2022, Google paid Apple $20 billion for the default status, documents unsealed this week showed.
DoJ lawyers allege that Google achieved and perpetuated its dominance through these default deals that also expanded to Samsung and other device makers. But Mehta expressed doubts that the case had sufficiently demonstrated the negative consequences necessary to deem the deals anti-competitive according to US law and precedent. Mehta also said the Google case was very different from Microsoft’s as it did not involve agreements to outright exclude competing browsers and other products.
He also poked holes in Google’s defence, wondering how any rival search engine could win access to default deals if the cost would require tens of billions of dollars.