The Fate of Google’s Search Business Rests in the Hands of Judge Amit Mehta: Closing Arguments Conclude in Landmark Trial

The fate of Google’s search business is now in the hands of Judge Amit Mehta, as closing arguments concluded in the landmark trial on Friday. The Department of Justice and plaintiff states made their last arguments on Google’s alleged anticompetitive conduct in the general search market and its illegal conduct in search advertising. The government is attempting to show that Google monopolized key distribution channels, impeding potential rivals from becoming significant threats. Google’s lead litigator argued that the company has succeeded with a superior product. The trial’s outcome will impact not only Google but the public as well.

One of the key points of contention in the trial is whether suitable substitutes for Google ads exist. Google argues that there are plenty of alternatives for advertisers, while the government disagrees. Judge Mehta has expressed sympathy with the government’s arguments, acknowledging that competitors like Amazon offer robust ad platforms. However, he noted that social media platforms like Facebook and TikTok differ from Google since they often need to infer user intent from indirect signals, while Google’s users have a clear search objective.

In 2017, Google ran an experiment over several weeks and found it could increase prices five to 15 percent while still growing revenue.

Besides the substitution debate, evidence of Google’s ability to increase prices through experiments has been presented in court. The Department of Justice argues that Google’s pricing power highlights its monopolistic behavior, while Google claims it is simply determining the market value and running pricing experiments to set fair prices.

In the trial, states argue that Google intentionally delayed the inclusion of certain features for SA360, its search engine marketing tool, for advertising on Bing. The states consider this to be anticompetitive behavior on Google’s part since the company publicly promised not to favor its services on SA360. The delayed feature’s absence for nearly five years after Microsoft’s request raises suspicions of anticompetitive intent.

Another aspect of the trial revolves around whether Google intentionally deleted or failed to retain relevant documents that could have been used as evidence. The Department of Justice accuses Google of equivocally destroying documents and wants the court to impose sanctions that demonstrate the consequences of such actions. Google’s retention policy and actions have raised concerns about its transparency and anticompetitive practices.

“Google’s retention policy leaves a lot to be desired.”

Regarding the alleged destruction of documents, the judge criticized Google’s policy of leaving the responsibility of preserving documents to its employees. The Department of Justice is pushing for sanctions that reflect the risk of destroying evidence, and they want the court to assume that any deleted chats would have had unfavorable implications for Google. The judge also highlighted Google’s deliberate training to avoid certain terms and avoid being tagged with anti-competitive behavior, as noted in an article by Bloomberg Law.