Why did the United States start a case against Google?
According to the government, the technology company has a dominance of close to 90% in the search market, which it supposedly achieved through commercial agreements with smartphone manufacturers, such as Apple, to be the default option in the initial configuration. Of the device.
This is the most important trial that the company has ever faced, as it is the first time that it has been accused of monopoly by the federal government, and the question that seeks to be resolved is whether the technology companies have obtained all their power and monopoly by breaking laws.
In the middle of this week, Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of software and services, testified in court to defend the agreement between Apple and Google that establishes it as the default search engine on all Apple devices.
Although the intercompany agreement, known as ISA, has been in place since 2002, Cue was tasked with negotiating its current version with Google CEO Sundar Pichai in 2016. During his testimony, the Justice Department pressured Cue to will provide specific details about the $10 billion-a-year deal.
When Google and Apple renegotiated, Cue said his company wanted a higher percentage of the revenue Google earned from its users, whom it directed to the search engine. The discussion around the numbers was behind closed doors, but Cue wanted Apple to get a higher percentage, while Pichai wanted to keep the deal as it was.
Eventually, the executives reached a compromise regarding some other number that was not disclosed in court, and Google has been paying Apple that amount ever since.
Meagan Bellshaw, the Justice Department lawyer, asked the Apple executive if he would have abandoned the agreement if they had not reached a negotiation regarding revenue sharing, to which Cue responded no because “at that time there was no a valid alternative to Google,” adding that there still isn’t one.