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

Beijing, September 13 (Xinhua)-- the US Justice Department sued Google for monopolizing its web search service on Tuesday, local time. According to the evidence, more than 20 years ago, when Google began to become a dark horse in the search market, Google executives made a series of plans to beat competitors, including in as many web browsers as possible. Make Google search the default search service.

According to evidence provided by the U.S. Department of Justice, Pexels, then Google's chief economist, Hal Varian, sent a warning email to management in July 2003, warning that Microsoft plans to integrate its own web search service into the Windows operating system, which will pose a serious threat to Google search.

Google was planning various Internet products at the time, and Varian warned that every possible way to retain users should be considered at the same time.

Varian said that so far, Google has considered more indicators such as technological advantages, user value and potential revenue when planning new products. He believes that providing an excellent product is a top priority, but Google should also consider competitors' entry barriers, user switching costs, intellectual property rights and other issues.

In Tuesday's trial, the Justice Department, as the plaintiff, asked Varian to testify in court. In order to maintain its monopoly in the web search market, Google provides more than $10 billion a year to competitors, smartphone manufacturers and mobile communications service providers to set Google as the default search in smartphones or web browsers, the Justice Department said.

At the beginning of the trial, Kenneth Dintzer, a lawyer for the US Department of Justice, said the lawsuit was about the future of the search engine market and whether Google search would encounter substantial competitors in the future. Available evidence suggests that Google has set the default search to crack down on competitors, and so far Google has monopolized 89% of the web search market.

A signal to monopolize the market

Varian revealed in court on Tuesday that Google's internal team has been tracking its own search market share for many years, using four internal indicators and data provided by third-party market research companies (such as Comscore).

It is said that in 2014, as a sign that Google has monopolized the search market, Google management decided to stop issuing tracking reports on search market share because the data no longer make much sense to Google.

The presiding judge in the lawsuit is Amit Mehta, and it is the first time in more than 20 years that the Justice Department has sued an American technology company.

The trial of the lawsuit will last for 10 weeks, and if Judge Mehta rules that Google has illegally maintained its monopoly in the search market, the Justice Department will ask the court to order further remedies to break Google's monopoly, including divesting Google's web search engine from other similar businesses, such as the Android operating system and Google Maps. If this goal is achieved, it will be the largest spin-off penalty for an American company since AT&T, an American telecom giant, was spun off in 1984.

In response to the Justice Department's allegations, Google retorted that the company gained such a high search market share because of excellent products, not a lack of competitor challenges.

On Tuesday, John Schmidtlein, a member of Google's legal team, said that consumers use Google search because the product provides value, not because they have to. The lawyer stressed that compared with the past, today's consumers actually have many search service options, as well as access to Internet information.

In 2007, Google executives were considering making search services more visible on their home page to stimulate users and increase market share, according to court evidence. The evidence mentions a meeting of executives on the subject, including Varian and Pichai (then Google's head of product development and now Google's CEO).

On the witness stand, Varian admitted that Google's search service had benefited from becoming the default search in web browsers. Overall, he said, it is valuable to be the default search engine, for Yahoo search, Microsoft search and Google search.

Another key witness, former Google employee Christopher Barton, will testify in court on Wednesday, US time. He was in charge of negotiating default search with web browser makers of the Android operating system. After Barton, Varian will continue to testify.

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