Google pays to be the default
Google CEO Sundar Pichai told the US Federal court overseeing his company’s antitrust case that Google’s deal with Apple makes it “very, very seamless and easy for users to use our services.”
“They knew these agreements crossed antitrust lines,” said Kenneth Dintzer, DoJ Deputy Branch Director, said in his opening remarks in September. “Defaults are powerful, scale matters and Google illegally maintained a monopoly for more than a decade.”
Apple is not accused of wrongdoing in the case, but Federal prosecutors have cited Google’s primacy as Apple’s default search engine as an example of the company’s overreach. From Apple’s perspective, it’s about providing best results for customers, according to Apple senior vice president of Services Eddy Cue.
When he was asked to testify in September, Cue told the court, “We make Google be the default search engine because we’ve always thought it was the best.”
