Google accused the US government of wanting to punish it for being more successful than its competitors.
The company made the comments in an unsealed post-trial brief filed with a federal judge in D.C. as part of its ongoing legal battle with the US Department of Justice, which has accused it of illegally monopolizing the search market
In legal filings, Google argued that its position as the world’s leading search engine is the result of its “relentless work” and claimed that if it lost the antitrust trial, the verdict would run afoul of US antitrust law.
What Google says. Google stated in the legal document:
“The evidence conclusively established that Google is the highest quality and most popular search engine in the United States, with the highest overall monetization of search engine advertising…However, plaintiffs should punished Google and prevented it solely from competing to win these revenue-sharing agreements.” “The purpose? To favor smaller general search engine competitors in the hope that they will be given greater incentives and opportunities to improve their search quality, despite a long history of failing to do so in the past.” “This result is contrary to US antitrust law. Punishing a successful company that has out-innovated its competitors for the benefit of consumers harms competition, not the other way around.”
What the DOJ says. The DOJ accused Google of using contracts with phone makers and web browser operators for substantial sums of money to limit competition from other search engines such as Microsoft’s Bing. The DOJ is expected to submit its own report.
next steps Closing arguments in the trial that lasted several weeks last year are expected in May.
Why we care. If the US government wins, Google may no longer be the default search engine on computers, laptops and mobile devices. This could give rivals like Microsoft and Yahoo a chance to become the top search engine, changing the way we search online.
Get the daily search newsletter marketers trust.
deep dive. Read Google’s post-trial summary in full for more information.
Add Search Engine Land to your Google News feed.
New in Search Engine Land
About the author
Nicola Agius is Search Engine Land’s paid media editor after joining in 2023. She covers paid media, retail media and more. Prior to that, she was Director of SEO at Jungle Creations (2020-2023), overseeing the company’s editorial strategy for various websites. He has more than 15 years of experience in journalism and previously worked at OK! Magazine (2010-2014), Mail Online (2014-2015), Mirror (2015-2017), Digital Spy (2017-2018) and The Sun (2018-2020). He also previously partnered with SEO agency Blue Array to co-author the Amazon best-selling book Mastering In-House SEO.
[ad_2]
Source link
