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The U.S. government’s landmark antitrust trial against Google’s search business is nearing its conclusion. Under the Trump administration, the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission started investigating Amazon, Apple, Google and Meta, the parent company of Instagram and WhatsApp, for monopolistic behavior. The government has since sued all four companies — Google twice — in what it says is an effort to rein in their power and promote more competition. Closing arguments wrap up on Friday in Google’s first antitrust suit on allegations that it has a monopoly in internet search. and 17 states sued Amazon, accusing it of protecting a monopoly by squeezing sellers on its vast marketplace and favoring its own services.

Persons: Trump Organizations: U.S, Justice Department, Federal Trade Commission, Apple, Google, Big Tech, Amazon Locations: Google’s

The judge overseeing a landmark U.S. antitrust challenge to Google tried to poke holes in both sides’ cases during closing arguments Thursday, as he weighs a ruling that could reshape the technology industry. Judge Amit P. Mehta was presiding over the first day of closing arguments in the most consequential tech antitrust case since the U.S. government sued Microsoft in the late 1990s. The Justice Department has sued Google, accusing it of illegally shoring up a monopoly in online search. On Thursday, Judge Mehta questioned the government’s argument that Google’s dominance had hurt the quality of the experience for searching for information online. “Certainly I don’t think the average person would say, ‘Google and Amazon are the same thing,’” Judge Mehta said.

Persons: Judge Amit P, Mehta, Judge Mehta Organizations: Google, Microsoft, The

☆ Tech Industry Braces as Google Antitrust Trial Closes
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-02 | by ( David Mccabe | More About David Mccabe | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The biggest U.S. challenge so far to the vast power of today’s tech giants has reached its climax. v. Google — over whether the tech giant broke federal antitrust laws to maintain its online search dominance. Google insists that consumers use its search engine because it is the best product. Many antitrust experts expect he will land somewhere in the middle, ruling only some of Google’s tactics out of bounds. The trial is the biggest challenge to date to the vast power of today’s tech giants, which have defined an era when billions of people around the world depend on their products for information, social interaction and commerce.

Persons: Amit P, Mehta Organizations: Justice Department, Google, Apple, District of Columbia, Meta Locations: U.S

is a Times reporter based in Bangkok who has been covering Asia for more than 25 years. She focuses on in-depth and investigative stories.

Locations: Bangkok, Asia

Warner Bros. Discovery said on Monday that two members of its board of directors, Steven Newhouse and Steven Miron, had stepped down after the company learned about an investigation into whether their presence on the board violated antitrust law. Federal law forbids most corporate officers and board members to simultaneously serve on the boards of their competitors. Mr. Newhouse and Mr. Miron are both executives at Advance, a private, family-held business whose holdings include the Condé Nast glossy magazine empire that publishes titles such as Vogue and The New Yorker.

Persons: Discovery, Steven Newhouse, Steven Miron, Newhouse, Miron Organizations: Warner Bros, Advance, Vogue Locations: Yorker

But on the witness stand, Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, said there was “value” in being the default search engine on a device and framed the agreements with other companies as sound business decisions. Google paid $26.3 billion for its search engine to be the default selection on mobile and desktop browsers in 2021, according to the company’s internal data presented during the trial. Kevin Murphy, a Google economic expert, testified on Monday that Google shared 36 percent of search revenue from the default deal with Apple. Mr. Pichai testified that he repeatedly renewed the search engine deal with Apple because it worked well, leading to an increase in search usage and revenue and benefiting Apple, Google and its shareholders. They cited an instance in 2014 when Mozilla, which makes the Firefox browser, exited a default-search partnership with Google and selected Yahoo.

Persons: Sundar Pichai, Kevin Murphy, Pichai, ” Organizations: Google, Apple, New York Times, Mozilla, Yahoo

As Google’s chief executive, Sundar Pichai, tells it, his company has always been on the side of consumers. It has paid billions to other industry giants, like Apple and Samsung, he said, to make sure Google’s internet search engine worked as well as it should on those companies’ devices. “Given that Apple designs the experience, it wasn’t clear how they would change the experience if the financial incentive wasn’t there,” Mr. Pichai said while testifying for more than three hours. The Google chief was the highest profile witness to testify so far in the 10-week trial. The monopoly trial — the first involving a tech giant of the modern internet era — reflects increasing efforts in Washington to rein in the power of Big Tech.

Persons: Sundar Pichai, Pichai, Department’s, ” Mr Organizations: Apple, Samsung, Google, Big Tech Locations: Google’s, Washington

Since Sept. 12., the Department of Justice and a group of state attorneys general have questioned more than 30 witnesses as they try to prove that Google broke antitrust laws, in a landmark monopoly trial that may affect the power of the technology industry. The government is now wrapping up its side in the case — U.S. et al. v. Google — setting the stage for the internet giant to mount its defense starting this week. Two prime threads have emerged from the government’s case: what it said Google did to illegally maintain its search and search ads monopolies and how those practices harmed consumers and advertisers. How Google kept its online search dominance goingGoogle paid Apple billions of dollars to crush competitionOn the first day of the trial, the Justice Department said Google had paid Apple and other tech platforms more than $10 billion a year to make itself the default search engine on the iPhone and other devices.

Organizations: Department of Justice, Google, Justice Department, Apple

☆ In Antitrust Trial, Former Google Employee Details History of Search Deals
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-13 | by ( David Mccabe | More About David Mccabe | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Google has argued that its success in online search was the result of having a better product, not the default agreements. In opening statements on Tuesday, Google’s lawyer said it was easy for people to switch their search engine and that smartphone and browser makers promoted other search engines as well. On Wednesday, the Justice Department began the day in court by questioning Mr. Barton, who worked at Google forging agreements with mobile companies. Mr. Barton’s job had been to meet with executives from the telecom and smartphone makers, convince them to sign agreements to distribute Google search and see those agreements through to a final contract, he said. The goal was to “maximize the opportunity” for users to discover Google and start to use it regularly, he said.

Persons: Google’s, Meta, Mr, Barton, Barton’s Organizations: Google, The, Federal Trade Commission, Justice Department

The back-and-forth came in the federal government’s first monopoly trial since it tried to break up Microsoft more than two decades ago. If Google wins, it could act as a referendum on increasingly aggressive government regulators, raise questions about the efficacy of century-old antitrust laws and further embolden Silicon Valley. The Justice Department has filed a second lawsuit against Google over its advertising technology, which could go to trial as early as next year. The Federal Trade Commission is separately moving toward a trial in an antitrust lawsuit against Meta. Investigations remain open in efforts that could lead to antitrust lawsuits against Amazon and Apple.

Persons: Judge Amit P, Mehta, ”, Bill Baer, Biden Organizations: Microsoft, Google, U.S, District of Columbia, Justice Department, The, Federal Trade Commission, Meta, Amazon, Apple

What does Google say? Even though they do not operate general-purpose search engines, Google argues that they are rival destinations where consumers go to find products or content that bypasses Google entirely. Consumers have a choice to use other search engines, it argues, but choose Google because they find it most helpful. The government has to show that Google has monopoly power over the areas of the economy at issue in the case. The wider the market, the easier it is for Google to argue that it does not have monopoly power.

Organizations: Google, Consumers

The Justice Department has spent three years over two presidential administrations building the case that Google illegally abused its power over online search to throttle competition. The case — U.S. et al v. Google — is the federal government’s first monopoly trial of the modern internet era, as a generation of tech companies has come to wield immense influence over commerce, information, public discourse, entertainment and labor. Such a consequential case over tech power has not unfolded since the Justice Department took Microsoft to court in 1998 for antitrust violations. But since then, companies like Google, Apple, Amazon and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, have woven themselves into people’s lives to an even greater degree. Any ruling from the trial could have broad ripple effects, slowing down or potentially dismantling the largest internet companies after decades of unbridled growth.

Organizations: Google, District, Columbia, Justice Department, Microsoft, Apple Locations: U.S

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo’s visit to China is putting a spotlight on the future of TikTok in the United States, where criticism of the app and its ties to Beijing reached a fever pitch this year. Despite the intense pressure on the popular short-form video app, which is owned by the Chinese technology company ByteDance, efforts to ban or regulate it in Washington have not yet borne fruit. And even with all that scrutiny, Ms. Raimondo is not planning to discuss TikTok while in China, a glaring omission that reflects the impasse at which it has left the Biden administration. The administration has been stymied by how to deal with TikTok even as intelligence officials have warned that it poses a national security threat. Ms. Raimondo memorably told Bloomberg News this year that if the administration banned TikTok, “the politician in me thinks you’re going to literally lose every voter under 35, forever.” (TikTok claims 150 million users in the United States.)

Persons: Gina Raimondo’s, Raimondo, ”, TikTok Organizations: Biden, White, Bloomberg News Locations: China, United States, Beijing, Washington

☆ Amazon to Meet Regulators as U.S. Considers Possible Antitrust Suit
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-07 | by ( David Mccabe | More About David Mccabe | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

commissioners, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the discussions are confidential. The scheduled meetings signal that the F.T.C. is nearing a decision on whether to move forward with a lawsuit arguing that Amazon has violated antimonopoly laws. Such discussions are sometimes known as “last rites” meetings, after the prayers some Christians receive on their deathbed. As a $1.4 trillion behemoth, Amazon has turned into a major force in the economy.

Persons: Lina Khan, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, Alvaro Bedoya Organizations: Federal Trade Commission, Amazon, Metro, Goldwyn, Mayer

A federal judge said this week that the Justice Department and a group of states could not move forward with some claims in an antitrust lawsuit against Google, narrowing the scope of the most significant federal monopoly trial against a tech giant in decades. In the decision, which was unsealed on Friday, Judge Amit P. Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said the U.S. government and the states could not argue that Google maintained a monopoly by boosting its own products in search results over those of specialized sites. They had not “demonstrated the requisite anticompetitive effect,” he said. But Judge Mehta declined Google’s request to dismiss portions of the case. The decision sets the stage for the first major tech monopoly trial since the federal government took Microsoft to court in the 1990s, accusing it of monopolistic practices.

Persons: Judge Amit P, Mehta, ”, Judge Mehta Organizations: Justice Department, Google, U.S, District of Columbia, Microsoft, Apple, Meta Locations: U.S

The forceful antitrust posture is a pillar of President Biden’s agenda to stamp out economic inequality and encourage greater competition. “Promoting competition to lower costs and support small businesses and entrepreneurs is a central part of Bidenomics,” a senior administration official said in a call with reporters. The agency has accused Meta of buying Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 to prevent future competition. These so-called network effects have helped companies like Meta and Google maintain their dominance in social media and internet search. The agencies also laid out ways in which mergers involving “platform” businesses, the model used by Amazon’s online store and Apple’s App Store, could harm competition.

Persons: Biden’s, ”, Mr, Kanter, “ Organizations: “, Meta, Justice, Google Locations: Bidenomics, WhatsApp

A federal appeals court on Friday paused a judge’s order that had blocked much of the Biden administration from talking to social media sites about content. The case could have significant First Amendment implications and affect the conduct of social media companies and their cooperation with government agencies. In its three-sentence order, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit said the preliminary injunction issued this month by a federal judge in Louisiana would be put aside “until further orders of the court.” The appeals court also called for expedited oral arguments in the case. In the lawsuit, Missouri, Louisiana and five individuals said that President Biden’s campaign, his administration and outside groups pressured social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube to take down content that it objected to. That content included conservative claims about the coronavirus pandemic and the 2020 presidential election, and a story about Hunter Biden, the president’s son.

Persons: Biden, ”, Biden’s, Hunter Biden Organizations: U.S ., Appeals, Fifth Circuit, Facebook, YouTube Locations: Louisiana, Missouri

A federal judge on Tuesday ruled against the Federal Trade Commission’s attempt to delay Microsoft’s $70 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, setting the stage for the tech giant and the video game publisher to merge as soon as this month. In a 53-page decision, Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley of U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California said the F.T.C. had failed to show it was likely to prove that the merger was likely to result in a substantial reduction in competition that would harm consumers. The ruling is a significant blow to the F.T.C.’s efforts to police blockbuster tech mergers more aggressively. has sued Microsoft, Meta and Amazon, but it walked away from one of its cases against Meta and has had little to show for its efforts so far.

Persons: Jacqueline Scott Corley, Lina Khan Organizations: Federal Trade, Activision Blizzard, U.S, Northern, Microsoft, Meta Locations: Northern District, California

A deal to ensure that data from Meta, Google and scores of other companies can continue flowing between the United States and European Union was finalized on Monday, after the digital transfer of personal information between the two jurisdictions had been thrown into doubt because of privacy concerns. The decision adopted by the European Commission is the final step in a yearslong process and resolves — at least for now — a dispute about American intelligence agencies’ ability to gain access to data about European Union residents. The debate pitted U.S. national security concerns against European privacy rights. The accord, known as the E.U.-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, gives Europeans the ability to object when they believe their personal information has been collected improperly by American intelligence agencies. A new independent review body made up of American judges, called the Data Protection Review Court, will be created to hear such appeals.

Persons: Didier Reynders, Merrick B, Garland, Gina Raimondo Organizations: Meta, Google, European Union, European Commission, European, U.S Locations: United States, European Union

Two months after President Biden took office, his top digital adviser emailed officials at Facebook urging them to do more to limit the spread of “vaccine hesitancy” on the social media platform. At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, officials held “weekly sync” meetings with Facebook, once emailing the company 16 “misinformation” posts. And in the summer of 2021, the surgeon general’s top aide repeatedly urged Google, Facebook and Twitter to do more to combat disinformation. The examples are among dozens of interactions described in a 155-page ruling by a federal judge in Louisiana, who on Tuesday imposed temporary but far-reaching limits on how members of Mr. Biden’s administration can engage with social media companies. It taps into fury on the right about how social media companies have treated stories about the origins of Covid, the 2020 election and Hunter Biden, the president’s son.

Persons: Biden, Hunter Biden Organizations: Facebook, Centers for Disease Control, Google, Twitter Locations: Louisiana

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