At the antitrust hearing on September 12, Google insisted that it did not break the law to maintain its huge market share and argued that its search engine was popular because of its superiority. Google lawyer John Schmidtlein said the payments the DOJ mentioned were used to compensate partners to ensure software maintenance and timely security updates.
Schmidtlein argues that consumers dissatisfied with Google are just a few clicks away from changing their default search engine to Bing, Yahoo, or DuckDuckGo. However, the majority of Microsoft desktop software users prefer Google, even though Bing is pre-installed on the Edge browser.
The person in charge of the lawsuit for the US Department of Justice - lawyer Kenneth Dintzer said Google began to monopolize the search engine market since 2010. After stifling competitors, the technology "giant" has increasingly innovated its tools and paid less attention to privacy issues.
Search is a key part of Google's business, driving advertising sales and other profitable areas.
In addition, Google handles about 90% of search queries worldwide . The more searches it handles, the more data it collects, which gives it a leg up on its competitors. In an internal document, Google once called the agreements the "Achilles' heel" of rival search engines.
Dintzer accused Google of using its monopoly power to force advertisers to pay higher prices for its services. He also said he found evidence that Google hid information about payments made to other companies, claiming that these agreements maintained Google's illegal monopoly in the market.
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