Google doesn't allow competition, Apple is kingmaker: Nadella testifies in Google anti-trust trial

Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, testified as a witness for the US Justice Department in a antitrust trial against Alphabet, the parent company of Google. 

Google, which controls almost 90 per cent of the search industry, is accused by the Justice Department of abusing the dominance of its search engine to stifle competition and innovation at the expense of consumers.

The prosecution claims that in order to maintain its position at the top, Google paid illegally $10 billion annually to wireless carriers like AT&T, smartphone manufacturers like Apple, and other parties to be the default search engine on their devices.

Satya Nadella testified in the Google anti-trust trial, claiming that due to Google's market dominance, Microsoft is unable to compete, media outlets reported.

"You can call it popular, but to me it's dominant," Nadella said. Speaking about the deal between Apple and Google, which makes Google the default search engine in all Apple devices, Nadella said that Microsoft was willing to pay $15 billion a year to make Microsoft’s bing the default search engine and even agree to all privacy rules by Apple to secure the deal. 

“Microsoft was even willing to hide its search engine’s ‘Bing’ brand on Apple devices in order to secure an agreement with Apple”, he said.

“It would be a game changer, Apple is the kingmaker,” said Nadella.

Arguments around default search engines are a key part of the trial against Google.

“Google makes it impossible to compete by making itself the default search engine everywhere. Since most people don’t change their defaults, that means no other company has a chance to get in front of users and get the data they need to build a great product and build a meaningful competitor,” Nadella added.

Complaining that Google is trying to lock up content required to train AI models by signing expensive and exclusive deals with publishers, Nadella said he’s worried about Google’s growing dominance.  

“When I am meeting with publishers now, they say Google's going to write this check and it's exclusive and you have to match it. It’s a vicious cycle" he said.