US ends primary defences against Google
Google, The US government wrapped up the major arguments in its antitrust lawsuit against Alphabet-owned it on Thursday, November 16. This brings an end to the case’s evidence phase, in which it is accused of violating antitrust laws in order to gain market dominance. The computer behemoth is being accused by the US Justice Department of abusing its influence illegally and operating as a monopolist. Judge Amit Mehta of the US District Court for the District of Columbia reportedly told Reuters that he was unsure about his final ruling. He scheduled the last round of arguments for the first week of May.
The Trump administration brought the lawsuit against Google. It is the first of these cases against the digital giants with the intention of controlling these businesses. During the administration of former US President Donald Trump, a complaint was also brought against Meta. The Biden administration’s antitrust regulators have two cases filed: one against it and one against Amazon. During the hearing, Michael Whinston, a government witness and professor of economics at MIT, expressed his disagreement with Google’s assertion that it needed to defeat Microsoft to have its operating system (OS) come pre-installed on smartphones only. He said that it’s payments to Apple and other companies totaling USD 26.3 billion were monopoly earnings given to distributors.
“Google generated significant revenue from these agreements,” he stated, as cited by Reuters. The data it released shows that Alphabet’s net profit for the July–September quarter was USD 19.69 billion. This was an increase above the USD 13.91 billion profit it declared for the same period the previous year. According to Whinston, Google has a 90% market share in the US and is not incentivized to enhance quality.
“They’re not investing that money when there’s no danger from competitors. And quality is inferior,” Whinston stated in response to inquiries from the Justice Department’s Adam Severt. Google’s attorney, John Schmidtlein, said that the money Google paid out was a legitimate revenue-sharing arrangement that emerged from competition. He said that the goal of these payments was to protect user data.