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Gemini chatbot interface on Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra. Photo: Bloomberg . |
In a court hearing related to the antitrust lawsuit, a representative of Alphabet, Google's parent company, said that it paid "huge sums" each month to install the Gemini chatbot on Samsung smartphones.
Peter Fitzgerald, Google's vice president of platform and device partnerships, admitted to paying Samsung since January.
According to The Verge , this was after the court ruled that Google violated antitrust laws. Part of the reason for the violation also came from agreements with Apple and Samsung to install Google Search as the default search engine.
When Samsung launched the Galaxy S25 series in January, Gemini was set as the default AI assistant when holding down the power button, while Samsung's Bixby assistant was a secondary option.
In an article published in The Information on April 26, Fitzgerald said that several companies also approached Samsung to negotiate installing the AI assistant, including Perplexity, Microsoft, Meta and OpenAI.
“We look at what our competitors are offering,” Fitzgerald stressed.
Under cross-examination, Fitzgerald asserted that the agreement with Samsung allowed users to choose an alternative AI assistant. He said Google had amended the agreement to remove the requirement that only its search engine and assistant be installed.
However, the Justice Department attorney pointed to an email from Google amending the contract sent just before the trial, and new internal slides showed that Google was considering tightening the deal, including “requiring partners to pre-install Gemini alongside Search and Chrome.”
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Abigail Slater, Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division (far right) and Todd Blanche, Deputy Attorney General of the United States (far left) outside the court on April 21. Photo: Bloomberg . |
Bloomberg quoted Fitzgerald as saying that the Gemini installation agreement is valid for at least two years, including monthly payments for each Samsung device pre-installed with Gemini. Google shares a percentage of revenue with Samsung based on the number of subscribers.
David Dahlquist, a lawyer for the US Department of Justice, said that the amount Google pays Samsung each month is a "huge amount of money", although he did not give a specific figure.
Previously, from 2020 to 2023, Google paid a total of $8 billion to install Google Search, Play Store and Google Assistant as default on Samsung smartphones, according to testimony in a trial on the monopoly of the Android ecosystem.
At trial in 2023, a jury found that Google had abused its monopoly position in the Android app market through its Play Store policies. A judge ordered Google to lift restrictions that prevented developers from using third-party app stores and payment systems. Google is appealing the case.
In court testimony, Sissie Hsiao, a representative of Google's Gemini division, confirmed that the app currently does not have ads, but executives are considering adding them. It's worth noting that advertising is Google's biggest source of revenue, especially ads that appear in search results.
If it loses, Google would be barred from making similar deals in the future, and would have to sell its Chrome browser and share much of its Google Search data. Google, for its part, argues that it would simply stop paying for some default tools to comply.
Source: https://znews.vn/google-tra-khoan-tien-khong-lo-cho-samsung-post1549149.html
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