Satya Nadella hits out at ‘dominant’ Google during US antitrust case, says ‘You can call it popular, but…’

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella testified at the Google antitrust case brought on by the US Justice Department. US government is arguing that Google has used its search dominance to quash the competition and innovation that hurt the interests of consumers.

Nadella alleged on Monday that Google’s unfair trade practices have led the company to maintain its dominant position as a search engine while thwarting competition like Microsoft’s Bing, reported AP.

Before taking over as Microsoft CEO from Steve Ballmer, Nadella led the company’s efforts into building a Google rival search engine that ultimately resulted in Bing in 2009, reported The Washington Post.

Nadella argued that Google was dominant owing to the agreements it had made with device manufacturers to have it as the default search engine on their products. He added that users do not have much choice in switching out of their default search engine on mobile phones and PCs.

“The entire notion that users have choice, and they go from one website to another website … is completely bogus…Defaults is the only thing that matters in changing search behavior.” Nadella was quoted as saying by Forbes.

Is Google better than Bing?

Google’s lead litigator John Schmidtlein quizzed Nadella on why the users switched from Bing to Google despite Microsoft’s software being the default software on some devices. Google has argued that Microsoft made a series of missteps with Bing that prevented the company from taking Google’s market share.

In reply to the tense cross-examination, Nadella said, “You can call it popular, but to me it’s dominant,”

What is Google antitrust case?

Google is being sued by the US Justice Department over allegations that the tech giant smothered over the competition by paying companies like Apple, Verizon and others in order to make its search engine the first that users see when they open their devices, AP reported.

Regulators argue that Google pays around $10 million to smartphone companies like Apple in order to have its software as the default search engine on their devices.

Google has argued that it dominates the search engine market because it is better than the competition while noting that users have the option of switching to other search engines with a couple of clicks.

The antitrust case is the biggest suit brought by the Justice Department since the body targeted Microsoft’s dominance over the Windows operating system around 25 years back. The case was first filed during the Trump Administration in 2020 and the trial began on September 12 at the US District Court in Washington DC.