Google has exploited its dominance of the internet search market to lock out competitors and smother innovation, the Department of Justice said Tuesday at the opening of the biggest U.S. antitrust trial in a quarter century.
"This case is about the future of the internet and whether Google's search engine will ever face meaningful competition," said Kenneth Dintzer, the Justice Department's lead litigator.
Google counters that it faces a wide range of competition despite commanding about 90% of the internet search market. Its rivals, the company argues, range from search engines such as Microsoft's Bing to websites like Amazon and Yelp, where consumers can post questions about what to buy or where to go.
Google"began weaponizing defaults" more than 15 years ago, Dintzer said, citing an internal Google document calling its arrangements an"Achilles Heel" for rival search engines offered by Yahoo and MSN. And Dintzer said Google deleted documents to keep them out of court proceedings and sought to hide others under attorney-client privilege.
From Google's perspective, perpetual improvements to its search engine explain why people almost reflexively keep coming back to it, a habit that long ago made"Googling" synonymous with looking things up on the internet. Schmidtlein said Google's tweaks simply made its search better than key rival Bing."At every critical juncture," he said,"they were beaten in the market.
The Justice Department's antitrust case echoes the one it filed against Microsoft in 1998. Regulators then accused Microsoft of forcing computer makers that relied on its dominant Windows operating system to also feature Microsoft's Internet Explorer — just as the internet was starting to go mainstream. That bundling practice crushed competition from the once-popular browser Netscape.
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