Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Beijing, September 9 (Xinhua)-- during a hearing in an antitrust lawsuit on Thursday, the U.S. Justice Department accused Alphabet-owned Google of paying billions of dollars a year to Apple, Samsung Electronics and other telecom giants to "illegally" maintain its status as the largest search engine, Beijing time reported.

Kenneth Dintzer, a lawyer at the US Department of Justice, did not elaborate on how much Google would pay to become a "default search engine", saying only that it was "quite huge".

At a hearing in a federal district court in Washington on the same day, Dintzer told presiding judge Amit Mehta that Google invested billions of dollars in default search, and Google knew very well that users would not modify the default search. "this default search status is significant, so Google is buying an exclusive default search status."

In the Justice Department's lawsuit against Google monopoly, Thursday's hearing amounted to the first face-to-face battle between the prosecution and the defense. On the same day, a number of officials of the US Department of Justice and the Attorney General of Nebraska appeared in the public gallery.

The Justice Department accused Google of doing everything it could to maintain its monopoly on web search in violation of US law. At the heart of these allegations is the default search agreement signed between Google and outside vendors.

In addition to the U.S. Department of Justice, prosecutors in several states have jointly launched a similar independent lawsuit against Google, which will be tried by Judge Mehta later.

A formal trial of the Justice Department's lawsuit against Google may have to wait until next year. But Thursday's hearing was the first substantive hearing in the case. During the day-long hearing, both the prosecution and the defense expressed their views on Google's search business model.

Google: the Justice Department misunderstood the search market. The Justice Department's lawsuit took place at the end of the Trump administration, and this is the first time the federal government has launched a "lawsuit punch" against a technology giant. Lawsuits and investigations against tech giants are continuing under the Biden administration. On Thursday, the White House hosted a round table of experts to discuss the negative impact of large technology platforms on the U.S. economy and the health of teenagers.

In court, Google lawyer John Schmidtlein said that the US Department of Justice and state prosecutors misunderstood the search market and focused too much on small search competitors, such as Microsoft's Bing and DuckDuckGo. In fact, Google also faces competition from Meta, Amazon, Grubhub and other search services, as well as many sites where consumers search for information.

Schmidtlein said that when consumers want to shop on Amazon, they don't need to search Google, they want to buy air tickets from online travel site Expedia, and they don't have to search Google. Google doesn't face competition every time users type in keywords, but that doesn't mean Google doesn't have strong search competitors.

Justice Department: Google is hurting competitors in this way, lawyers from the Department of Justice and state prosecutors, as well as Google, agree that it is critical for a search engine to get fresh data on users' every search behavior. Google currently controls the world's most popular web browser, Chrome, and Android, the second most popular mobile operating system.

In the court statement, Justice Department lawyer Dintzer focused on how Google's search engine works and how the default search cooperation agreement hurts competitors.

Dintzer said Google has default search agreements with a number of companies, including Google and smartphone makers such as Apple, Samsung Electronics and Motorola, as well as most browser developers, as well as the three major US mobile operators (AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile). In this way, Google can ensure that the search software will be pre-installed on the new phone, ensuring the status of default search.

Dintzer also pointed out that Microsoft's Bing search is also the default search for its own Edge browser and Amazon Fire tablet.

Dintzer said that Google's default search agreement makes its own search a "gateway" for many people to search websites and information online, so that Google can prevent search competitors from expanding their scale, and service scale is an important condition for competitors to challenge Google search. "the exclusive default search agreement allows Google to systematically block competitors' services."

Google: browser willingness to cooperate is not forced Google lawyer Schmidtlein said that since the early 2000s, Google has signed default search agreements with browser makers such as Apple and Mozilla, but the Justice Department and state prosecutors have not explained why these long-standing agreements have become a problem today. In addition, the revenue-sharing partnership provided by Google is important for browser developers such as Mozilla, which offer free browser downloads.

Schmidtlein says browser developers don't work with Google because they have to, and they look forward to it. He stressed that Google has achieved success in search cooperation, what it has done is very valuable, and it is not illegal for Google to use its advantages to compete in the market.

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