Google Pays Billions to Industry Giants to Maintain Top Search Engine Spot

Alphabet Inc.'s Google pays billions of dollars each year to Apple Inc., Samsung Electronics Co. and other telecom giants to illegally maintain its spot as the No. 1 search engine, the US Justice Department told a federal judge Thursday.

DOJ attorney Kenneth Dintzer didn't disclose how much Google spends to be the default search engine on most browsers and all US mobile phones, but described the payments as "enormous numbers."

"Google invests billions in defaults, knowing people won't change them," Dintzer told Judge Amit Mehta during a hearing in Washington that marked the first major face-off in the case and drew top DOJ antitrust officials and Nebraska's attorney general among the spectators. "They are buying default exclusivity because defaults matter a lot."

Google's contracts form the basis of the DOJ's landmark antitrust lawsuit, which alleges the company has sought to maintain its online search monopoly in violation of antitrust laws. State attorneys general are pursuing a parallel antitrust suit against the search giant, also pending before Mehta.

A trial isn't expected to start formally until next year, but Thursday's hearing was the first substantive one in the case - a daylong tutorial where each side laid out its views on Google's business.

September 09, 2022